The Darkest Album I Have Ever Heard - Everywhere at The End of Time - A Bucket of Jake

sup y'all welcome back to the mermalair I'm your host face off if that intro was the evidence enough y'all know I rarely get serious on this channel but every once in a blue moon I'll talk about some heavy stuff and today's the day I retell the tale of the album that absolutely broke me the caretakers everywhere at the end of time general advisory before we begin I cover quite serious mental health issues and depressing things in general so if you aren't in the best place mentally right now I would suggest maybe saving this one for a later date because it's not like the entire [ __ ] world had something terrible happened to it every single month of 2020 or anything check this out I have a live reaction of me listening to this album okay that's the last meme of the video I promise so I think we should start where all great stories begin the beginning a few months ago I was scrolling through YouTube recommended looking for a juicy piece of content to sink my choppers into and I saw a thumbnail they gave me a guttural reaction something about this image unsettled me but I didn't know why it caught my attention thus after one looks at the thumbnail I looked at the title and the video was titled The Caretaker everywhere at the end of time stages 1 through 6 complete which got me questioning is this like an album or something to that extent but just as I thought I stumbled across my next Jim album I glanced at the time code six and a half hours this project is over six [ __ ] hours long and I thought drave scorpion was too long didn't funny after seeing this I quickly realized this wasn't going to be something I was going to listen to in my next workout or any workout in the following days for that matter how hot coronavirus I knew that I had to save it for a special occasion and that special occasion came a small boost in curiosity for this came with watching the video can you name one object in this photo which you may have seen before or at least saw the thumbnail of for those whose knowledge goes as far as the thumbnail I'll break it down for you the video was dissecting a semi viral twitter / reddit image of a bunch of things but your brain wouldn't let you name anything you were looking at people claimed it's what your brain sees when it's having a stroke having the whole world around you be similar enough to know that you're still alive but distant enough to know something is very wrong but that was all debunked when the guy claiming to be the original artist said he just plugged into a website called art breeders so if you want to give people strokes calling art breeder calm not sponsored but it really did my curiosity when after watching further into the video the video would draw parallels to the image to the artwork of one ivon seal there's the [ __ ] album cover again he went on to explain how the art of the caretakers albums are a great representation of the music he makes which I will indeed go into more detail as the video progresses this gave me a surface level interest that would remain on my mind for the next few months I was too intimidated by the length of the project to actually engage so once again this mystery album would fall the wayside recently I've been having people in my life dealing with mental health issues and I've been feeling pretty down questioning things being in a more worried and empathetic state you know because world's not too great right now and like clockwork the video magically appears in my recommended once again this time my curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on it before I hit play I wanted to read the description and see what I was in for and holy [ __ ] was I in for it everywhere at the end of time is an artistic depiction of dementia the stages of the record coincide with the seven stages an individual goes through while suffering with dementia the description of the record on the vvm test youtube channel does a great job of breaking down each part and giving time codes and titles for the six plus hour behemoth of an album I was going to listen to upon first glance you were probably much like myself put off at the thought of this being a six hour plus record but after listening to it it's less like a one six hour plus record and more like six one hour plus records give or take but don't get me wrong these are meant to be listened to altogether in just one sitting but I tell myself to break stuff up so my dumb brain can make me think I do progress so in the throes of woe and at full mercy to this piece of music I click play and this [ __ ] thing shook me to my very core but before I dive into who is being played I'm going to give a backstory on who made it the caretaker also known as James Leland Kirby is an English and electronic musician producer and has been working under the caretaker name for decades with the earliest being in 1999 with the album selected memories from the Haunted Ballroom 1999 he has been doing this longer than I've been [ __ ] alive that's pretty epic James Kirby everywhere at the end of time is an accumulation of a multi-year release scheduled with phase one releasing in 2016 phases two and three and 2017 phases four and five and 2018 in the final phase six and 2019 Kirby wanted to capture what it was like to be a dementia patient in everywhere at the end of time in interviews he stated what a challenging process this has been to try and make dementia a disease that makes things not make sense make sense to release it to people that it won't make sense to and it's not supposed to make sense to us those six plus hours are sonically designed to recreate what a person feels and how their memory slowly and terrifyingly fades away while suffering from dementia people who study dementia and study those played with it have reported that almost universally the longest memory someone can hold on to is remembering their favorite song when all else fails patients can be heard humming their favorite song making these musical expressions by Kirby be literally the last thing that a person can ever remember when the music goes so do they he seems like a very intelligent and kind man so knowing that someone so interested and fascinated by this topic wants to make this multi-hour musical experience just out of plain passion I had to give the same passion back you know now what your eyes might have been drawn to in this video are those incredible album covers something that piqued my interest immediately and this art actually has some very interesting details so let's talk about that my theory with the album covers of this project can have parallels drawn between them and the self portraits of artist William Bucher Mullen cooter Mullen I'm sorry from getting your name wrong I'm sorry William is an artist that was diagnosed with a form of dementia and he wanted to turn it into an art science experiment where each year he would create a self-portrait of himself while the dementia progressively got worse he was diagnosed with dementia in 1995 and started the experiment the following year with his last installment being in the year of 2000 you could see in these images how more and more unfamiliar with his own reflection he got he looks into the mirror and doesn't recognize what he sees in his reflection scary [ __ ] right but the idea of not being able to recognize items has a direct correlation with the caretaker everywhere at the end of time earlier I mentioned about the video where you cannot name anything in this image and the concept of that mirrors what Kirby was going for for the aesthetic of the series the artist who created these beautiful album covers was previously mentioned Ivan seel seel is an English artist from Berlin and his style of art can be boiled down to the videos topic name one thing in this image you know the caretaker and seal have been working together for years so it's safe to say each other's ideas have some form of influence on the other these fantastic images are made with the most abstract ideas and concepts that could possibly imagined like these are just beautiful and I think the slow decline of a person's ability to recognize themselves let alone other people is represented perfectly in the album covers phase one is an image that could pre-safe lycée is a book or magazine rolled up a bit of questioning about specifics but you know the general idea of what it is phase two is an abstract flower pot you know what it is but you can't visualize what it's made out of you can't remember it you can't see specifics face there is a tree or seaweed or some [ __ ] the brush strokes are getting more and more distorted and weird as the covers go on phase four I feel is a direct correlation with William Mullens last self-portrait as a Begley quartz material face thing not I'm not entirely sure phase 5 is just pure abstractness comment what you see below well I see someone riding a seahorse but I cannot be certain about anything at this point phase 6 is the scariest with it just being a piece of wood and some tape or for the lame man a blank canvas ivan sealing the caretaker at the perfect combination and I'm so glad that these two people have gotten together and created the art that they have good on you guys for capturing visuals for the horrible disease that is dementia ok mini rant so this is how you get someone interested in a topic every school in America I realize that after I did this I dissention made a research paper about dementia if you told me to write a research paper about this in school I would've told you go [ __ ] yourself schools of the world find ways to make children interested in the topics you teach a piece of paper with fill in the blanks are boring as [ __ ] ok rant over now for the moment you've been waiting for let's dissect this [ __ ] thing a few people I've seen make similar style videos start with phase zero and I completely see why the medical phases of dementia start with no signs of dementia nothing that can be picked up by medical equipment or even ourselves really so if there was an album of this phase it would really sound like the music you listen to at home or on a bike ride or some [ __ ] Kirby made a phase of music without him from making an album that's big brain energy right there phase one is just all these music I'm [ __ ] with you I'll go in more detail this section is about 40 minutes in length the music plays back like it's been ripped from a vinyl record but Kirby says the project was entirely created digitally which is a testament to how talented he is and how determined he was to bring this creation of life when you could accomplish pretty much the same results which is going to your local record store and picking through the $1 record bin that music is a metaphor for the memory a certain track is a certain memory which is why in the first official stages of dementia you can hear the memories you know the structure of them there's just some slight semblance of distortion with vinyl crackle and occasional clipping and song tiles are troubling ones to say the least like a burning memory we don't have many days and my heart will stop of joy but if you overlook these and just focus on listening to the track for the most part the music is fine and very nostalgic which is probably why kirby went for a 30s feel to make us feel like we are older so we can simulate having memories of something very very old and with each stage there is a description of what the phase represents and what we should expect phase one reads here we are experiencing the first signs of memory loss this stage is most like a beautiful daydream the glory of old age and recollection the last of the great days after the great days are over we come to the end of the first album phase two is where I started to get a feeling something weird was afoot phase two is very similar to face one you can still hear music you can still understand what you are hearing it's relatively the same length and there are still distortions but the difference lies in the amount of distortion with phase two increasing the white noise increasing the vinyl crackle and increasing the unsettling vibes there are even some parts where beginnings of the songs are just ambient drones and white noise until the regular song kicks in the names of the tracks on facetube grow more eerie as well with tracks like a losing battle is raging glimpse of hope and trying time and the way ahead feels lonely tracks despite their names sound relatively sweet with some increase in vinyl crackle but when phase 2 was playing I knew that I was in for a brutal time deterioration and quality the overall personal mood is generally lower than at a point more confusion starts to settle in you know something is wrong but you want to hopelessly fight in thinking that you can cure it but remembering harder all that does is bring closer to stage 3 this is the final phase before confusion truly sets in stage 3 lasts a crisp 45 minutes and is when I start to feel my skin crawl same semblance of musical theory are there but whereas the atmosphere around the song seems to be distorted it's now the songs themselves that feel distorted with track seemingly being stretched in a heavy layer of reverb being applied this signifies that these memories are drifting and becoming thinner and thinner to recognize and becoming more and more hazy after the track would end the reverb would make it stretch and slowly fade away into a quiet nothing or counter to that abruptly stop in the middle and just play the next track it feels like the track is bouncing around inside of your own head with other abstract noises pops and brassy warbles like if you had a direct line to a microphone inside of your own brain the best example of what it sounds like is if you were in a horror movie and someone tried to put on a cheery oldies vinyl in the background like in the movie The Strangers I started to feel scared as a protagonist injected into this world I felt my memory of these tracks starting to fade and I just heard them my fear and confusion was accompanied by equally scary and confusing titles sublime beyond loss aching cavern without lucidity and an empty bliss beyond this world the descriptions only further creep me out and terrify me to here what's next to come here are presented with some of the last coherent memories for confusion fully rolls in and gray mist form and fade away finest moments have been remembered the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled as we progress some singular memories become more disturbed isolated broken and distant there are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages phase four is when the series goes from a distorted oldies record to a more noise and drone album not only is the fear and confusion intensified but time is as well with the album coming in at 90 minutes over an hour of distorted recollections the music has the feeling of the oldies music with glimpses of it in the distortion but the industrial sound effects have signified that the music has taken a backseat to the noise you start to confuse what instruments are being played not knowing if it's a trumpet violin piano what-have-you but one thing is for sure these songs sound like they're in pain the songs have a semblance of song structure but it feels alien at the same time the best way I can equate it to is dream logic there could be crazy [ __ ] going on and when you wake up and realize that none of nothing that you dream made any sense but when you were in the dream the abnormal becomes normal the tracks went from short two to four minutes on to 20 30 minute songs these phases have only four tracks and all but one are titled post awareness confusion and the other is titled a temporary moment of bliss and with the description post awareness Stage four is where serenity and the ability to recall similar moments gives away to confusion horror it's the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements repetitions and rupture like the odd title out said that would be the last somewhat clear memory I could hear before a deep quick descent phase five is the last cry of wanting to remember but the music speaks for itself the distortions are too much to recognize anything cohesive the music fades away to confusion like the tracks themselves have been stretched to one thousand times what they were supposed to be with litters of industrial movements and grinds peppering instrumentals almost to the point where you can't even call them instrumentals where there are not instruments rather noises of what used to be instruments now used to recreate what I can only equate to a broken record player constantly playing in your head when you try to remember something on occasion it sounds like memories have overlapped each other and play at the same time with one in the right channel and one on the left disorienting you making you question if either of these memories truly existed or if it always sounded like that I would become in trance I hated the noises outs hearing but I would be unable to remove my headphones the morbid fascination of the project has taken full effect on me much like the previous section this album is a slog as well clocking in to 90 minutes the track sound like they are screaming and if you jump into the stage without experiencing the gradual decline in sanity you would assume that these noises are a terrible electrical glitch in your device the tracks are divided into three parts a double part title advanced plaque entanglements synapse or retro genesis and sudden time regression in isolation and with the description of phase 5 isolation seems to be the only thing left to explore post awareness stage 5 confusion in horror more extreme entanglements repetition and rupture can give away to calmer moments the unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation phase six no description 90 plus minutes no semblance of the original music no grasp of reality no turning back the album has fully converted into one of the most horrifying noise albums I've ever heard with deep devastating drones and humongous walls of sound the fear has fully set in the previous five stages had descriptions but this one lacks one only one sentence reading post awareness Stage six is without description only for 30 minute plus tracks with the titles a confusion so thick you forget forgetting a brutal bliss beyond this empty defeat long decline is over and place in the world fades away all four of these titles is what I experienced the noise has been slowly becoming more and more normal to me I feel listening to these distorted white noise garbles is what I'm supposed to be doing the fight to secure my sanity has been lost and I have become one with the devastating noise gone are the parts of music I can clearly remember and all that is left to vague shadows of what once was and the final track the final stage of the final album the final five minutes is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever heard in my life the last memory what seems to be the last semblance of what was once considered music the last cohesive memory you can relive almost as well as back in stage one or even stage zero for that matter but like all other tracks the songs cannot continue like what once was and the songs fade away and it gets lost in the void even the white noise becomes silent there's no noise to speak of at all there were last piece of sanity your last piece of memory your last piece of life as the last track entails a slow fade of your last memory signifies death as your place in the world fades away as well told you this was some deep [ __ ] let's let's take some deep breaths and watch some frog videos as we recuperate from what the [ __ ] I just read [Music] I have listened to this project through twice and each of those times I've been absolutely devastated Leland Kirby set out to simulate the crippling illness that was dementia and he did an incredible job even though with the success comes horrible side effects after I listen to these I now look at the world a bit differently I now treasure moments and I have a newfound appreciation for photos taken of those good times because back in the day in the 30s they didn't have photos to remember all they had was their memory so if I had to boil down my whole combine in 13 plus our listening experience into a stupidly simple sentence it good I totally recommend you experiencing this for yourself it's one thing to hear sweaty dude describe this but it's a whole different thing to listen to it yourself but again if you haven't figured out yet listener discretion is advised this is some deep stuff and if the last thing you need right now is to get sad maybe save the listening for a later date but I view it as shock therapy and learning something new keeping my brain fresh especially in this isolation that we find ourselves in also if you do listen to it read the comments because there are some great friendly like-minded people going through the exact same thing you are here are some of my favorites I feel like this is what plays in the end credits of the universe I've been scrolling through the comments while listening and didn't realize I was already 30 minutes in it's unsettling to see how fast it's gone by already commenting to make sure everyone is okay this is a tough experience but even though we are random commenters we still go through this together and my personal favorite the best example I've ever seen of art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable I suggest to reading the comments after listening there are so many people sharing their experiences and comforting people while also creating an open dialogue about what they went through some actual dementia patients are in the comments explaining how true this is it's insane so in conclusion I recommend caution to the fate of heart but if you're up for it you will go through a six and a half hour self-discovery journey and I feel this commoner put it into perfect words how I feel you oh boy that's a long one Jesus Christ that hurt there it's my brain talking about didn't think I was gonna bust out one of these existential nightmares did ya I wasn't lying about that sweaty man comment it's very hot it's middle summer and I can't have my a/c on cuz I want to record for you beautiful people real quick I want to shout out people that I research for this video of course James Leland Kirby big shout out evan seal huge shout out shout out to solar sands because I used the video can you name one object in this photo great video highly produced what kind of [ __ ] hit the mic kind of what gave me the idea to do this after seeing again and I thought you know Big Ups to you a smaller channel that I saw jazz and his growing group of very real friends he did an art discussion on the album that I talked about and I looked I watched his video and he it's very long very in-depth he does he does an actual live reaction unlike me that did a shitty meme but I recommend listening that those all these videos I talked about will be linked in the description and last greeked face how to portray memory loss with music and art I watched that video to learn about William last name I can't pronounce and his whole thing with the dementia portraits I thought it was an extremely great thing to do and I want to shout out all these people for helping me research even though they didn't know that it helped me research it sounds [ __ ] me dude oh my god dude if you want to support James Leland Kirby for the art that he did he stops on Bandcamp and he sells vinyl records of these but I don't know if they're still in stock because it's starting to get big the video almost has a million views on YouTube so that's pretty it's pretty epic it's getting there damn bro the world is [ __ ] crazy right now so I recommend it I had a lot of fun making this video this is this is one of the videos I scripted out I usually don't script out videos but this is the one I've I really wanted to get this right you know I wanted to feel professional and I hope I comes across professional but also shoutouts I got my microphone fixed [ __ ] [ __ ] yeah dude I'm not using the snow ball anymore I'm back to my Audio Technica let's [ __ ] go and I have a new more expensive audio interface so hopefully this is gonna sound [ __ ] a lot better I have the m-audio air you got a record in mono did not know that because it was only coming through the left speaker but [ __ ] it whatever dude I got a new mic so thank you for coming thanks Crime Dog for let me use the snowball but I think I'm I think imma stick with mine I like this one a little better thank you for watching I appreciate it if you are this far in the video you are a true homie bro you're a true homie I really appreciate it thank you my channel is growing immensely I passed two thousand subscribers and we're still growing I am incredibly thankful for everything that's going on soon I want this to be my full-time job I want to not have to worry about going and lifts and [ __ ] or doing any of that I just want to do this for a living so alright I'm rambling caretaker everywhere at the end of time good good thank you for watching and if you had your existential crisis and you're picking up stages one through three on vinyl then uh I guess I guess you're good to go so thank you and remember in these trying times try your absolute hardest to have a pleasant day [Music]

Channel: A Bucket of Jake

Views: 2,465,451

Rating: 4.9375305 out of 5

Keywords: A Bucket of Jake, The Caretaker, The Caretaker Everywhere at the end of time, everywhere at the end of time, the caretaker review, the caretaker everywhere at the end of time review, everywhere at the end of time review, cursed video, cursed music, album review, a bucket of jake album review, solar sands, greek face, jazz and his growing group of very real friends, Can you name one object in this image, leyland kirby, ivan seal, video essay, new music, scary music

Id: l_x08kbj-Fk

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020