Six Albums Make One

It’s almost like a burning memory listening to the Leyland James Kirby AKA The Caretaker with the  album “Everywhere At The End Of Time.” The album genre is British band ambient hauntology and was released September 22, 2016. Although the album came out in September of 2016, I was surprised to see it being used on TikTok and many people began to listen to it on youtube and shared their experience of what it was like to listen to the album. The album is supposed to show you the stages of dementia and make you experience early memory loss and how it slowly progresses and becomes worse until you can’t remember anything.

When I first found out about the album I thought nothing of it. On TikTok, they said you were supposed to feel a creepy experience and feel the stages of someone that has dementia, but I didn’t believe it, so I listened to it. What caught my eye though was how it was distorted to feel like you’re reminiscing about old times and when I listened to it I felt like I was listening to ballroom music in the 1940s or 50s. But as you listen to the names of the song it starts to get bleaker and bleaker with some of the song names titled “We Don’t Have Many Days”, and “The Way Ahead Seems Lonely”. Although many people claimed they felt scared while listening to it and felt strange. It didn’t, it just feels like I was experiencing a weird dream.

When asked how they found out about the album, Michael Salas, a 10th grader said “I also found out about it through TikTok and thought it was interesting, but I was skeptical if it was all that.”

To the same question, Enrique Miramontes, an 11th grader said, “ Well I found the album while scrolling through TikTok, some person was talking about how it was an out of world experience and how you should try it and when I started listening to it the first song felt really soothing to my ears and I started listening to the others songs.”

Everywhere at the end of time is composed of 6 stages and each stage came out at different times the first stage was released in 2016 and there will be a new stage every 6 months before finally ending with the canonical death of the Caretaker project on March 14, 2019, said from Everywhere At The End Of Time Wikipedia. In each stage, it keeps progressing into memory loss and at each stage, you’re supposed to feel like you can’t remember anything. In the first stage, you begin to experience memory loss and it feels more or less like you are reminiscing about the old days. In later stages, you feel something is wrong. The album is around 6 hours long and as you progress through the album it begins to get more static and you start to realize something is wrong. The first stage is where you don’t feel much of the effect of memory loss. You feel normal and the music feels normal enough but you can still feel something is brewing. Then as you keep listing through the later stages it begins to be more static and you begin to feel your memories become intertwined. In stage 5 you start to feel dementia and you feel confusion, you start switching back and forth between moments of feeling calm and fear. Finally, in the last stage, you feel like you are drifting off in a void and you feel lost like you’re on a small boat in the middle of the sea. 

Salas said, “ When I listened to it I didn’t feel much to be honest it just felt like I was listening to dark and eerie music”. 

Miramontes said, “Although I didn’t finish the whole album the songs I did hear made me feel unusual because of the static in the songs, and for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to just lay down on my bed and just listen to the music.” 

It seems there is a mix, where some people listened to it but didn’t feel anything and others who did listen to it and did feel something. Although I was on the side of people who did listen to it but didn’t feel much, I was uncomfortable with some parts of the album like the cover art for each stage and the names of each song. 

Salas said, “I recommend others to listen to it but they would need to have 6 hours of free time to enjoy the whole experience.”

Miramontes said, “Yes I would recommend it to others because some of the songs are nice and somehow soothing and once you get into it you have a weird but cool experience.”

Although the album could be unappealing to many people because of it being different from most music it is a cool experience and worth a listen if you have time. It is different from the type of music I usually listen to, but to say the least, it can be listened to by almost anybody, I liked the concept but as a concept, I really liked the album but I didn’t get much out of what the music arranged, I’ll give it a 7 out of 10.