Recently, I have discovered an album that I became very interested due to its six-and-a-half-hour length. I had heard listened to bits and pieces of this album, but was too daunted by its length to listen to the whole thing until very recently, and little could've prepared me for the bone-chilling experience of this album.
The album in question is Everywhere at the End of Time by English musician James Leyland Kirby under the name The Caretaker. The album is set in six parts, or stages, which were released over time with the first stage being released in 2016 and the last stage being released in 2019.
The reason I described it as a "bone-chilling experience" is because of its subject matter and the way it portrays that subject matter. Everywhere at the End of Time is a musical representation of dementia, starting with the diagnoses and ending with death. The music itself represents memory and each of the six stages of the album represent a stage of dementia and the mental deterioration that accompanies it.
In stage one, the music sounds pretty normal; it sounds like oldies music from the 1930s or 40s, however, though it is original work designed by Kirby, it sounds like it is being played on a record player with the vinyl crackle and white noise that might naturally have. This stage represents early dementia, where the memories are still there, but there are slight distortions in them.
Stage two is very similar to stage one; the music is still there and sounds somewhat normal, but there is more vinyl crackle and white noise distorting the general atmosphere of the stage. In this stage, it is becoming more apparent that there is something wrong with the memory.
Stage three is the last of the awareness stages. Here, the music still sounds like music, but it is distorted, alongside the atmosphere, with reverb and echoes as well as songs ending abruptly or starting with white noise. Here, memories are still recognizable, but start to become entangled with each other as confusion seeps in.
In stage four, the first post-awareness stage, confusion takes control. There is no longer a sense of musical structure and the instruments are hard to determine. By this point, there are still elements of memories, but they no longer make sense and are almost unrecognizable.
In stage five, the music is pretty much thrown to the wayside and the album becomes more like a noise or drone album. Drones and mechanical sounds choke out any confused remnant of what might have once been music. In this stage, the mind grasps for any semblance of memory, but it can't take hold of anything no matter how hard it tries to remember.
Stage six is by far the most frightening part of the album. The music no consists of nothing but deep guttural drones and massive sweeps of sound until the last five minutes which ends with an almost angelic choir of sound and a solid minute of pure silence. In this stage, all memory is lost and the mind is left a blank state until death.
This album is an experience like no other. The entire piece can be found on a YouTube channel named vvmtest and includes detailed descriptions of each stage and each song on the album. If you ever get a spare six-and-a-half hours, and are in the mood to handle a sad and terrifying piece of music, I highly recommend checking it out.
