The series drew comparisons to the works of musicians William Basinski and Burial, while production of the later albums was influenced by the aleatoric music of avant-gardist composer John Cage.

It inspired several similar projects by the Caretaker fanbase, appeared as the theme in a mod for the video game Friday Night Funkin' (2020), and emerged in Internet memes such as the Backrooms.

In 1999, English electronic musician Leyland Kirby adopted the pseudonym the Caretaker, under which he released several albums sampling big band records to convey a ghostly ambience.

"[3] The concept of Everywhere at the End of Time, which has been described as avant-gardist and experimental in nature,[4][5][6] is intended to be an exploration of dementia's "advancement and totality",[7] representing the patient's feelings and struggles with the disorder.

[13] Its portrayal of confusion, according to music website Tiny Mix Tapes, "threatens at every moment to give way to nothing," and renders it the definitve swan song of the Caretaker alias.

[14] Music magazine Fact noted a "hauntological link" between the ballroom records sampled in each stage and the Muzak songs modified in vaporwave albums, while author Sarah Nove highlighted the series' lack of a physical form of aura.

"[2] The sound of Everywhere has also been compared to the style of electronic musician Burial;[12] author Matt Colquhoun wrote for The Quietus that both artists "highlight the 'broken time of the twenty-first century.

"[2] In their Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound, Bloomsbury Academic describes the later stages as "a disorienting cut-up of slurred reminiscences bathing in a reverberant fog", relating them to amusia and its effects on musical memory.

[28][34][35] Michele Palozzo of Italian music publication Ondarock [it] likened the record's "elegance" to Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and its dramatic "avidity" to the works of filmmaker Woody Allen.

[38] Track titles, such as "Surrendering to Despair", represent the patient's awareness of their disorder and the accompanying sorrow, while "The Way Ahead Feels Lonely" is directly lifted from a book on dementia by Sally Magnusson.

"[7] A good portion of the tracks are samples from An Empty Bliss, some returning with an underwater-like sound and ending abruptly, portraying the patient's growing despair and struggle to keep their memories.

[7] Online magazine Entropy described Stage 3's deterioration as the most distant from William Basinski's method of decay, and noted the record's "more direct, less intellectualized approach" to it when compared to the works of German musician Stephan Mathieu.

[25] The surreal and incoherent aspect of the melodies was compared by Bowe to experimental musician Oval's album 94 Diskont (1995), as they "capture the darkest, most damaged sounds in the project's lifespan.

"[7] The album expands its noise influence by replacing the previosly coherent melodies with violently overlapped samples, resulting in a sound similar to the works of Merzbow and John Wiese.

[7] The record uses the most vocals of the series, including whispers and recognisable English words; near the end of K1, a man announces, "This selection will be a mandolin solo by Mr. James Fitzgerald.

[53] The organ eventually gives way to a needle drop, leading to the climax of the series six minutes before the project's end: a clearly audible choir sourced from a degraded vinyl record.

Although the moment evoked varying interpretations from commentators, the most accepted theory by critics and medics is that it represents terminal lucidity, a phenomenon where patients suffering from neurological conditions experience a return of mental clarity shortly before death.

[51][55] The segment samples a performance of an English translation of Bach's aria "Lasst mich ihn nur noch einmal küssen"[d] of the St Luke Passion, BWV 246.

This aria was also used on the track "Friends Past Reunited" from Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom (1999) and A Stairway to the Stars (2001), two of the Caretaker's first albums,[56] a fact interpreted by writer Paul Simpson of AllMusic as the alias in a "full circle moment".

[1] Between the release of the third and fourth stages, he said the workload associated with the Caretaker and his other projects, including the Stranger and V/Vm, led to his e-mails being left unread for a few months, and announced he was "moving house and studio".

[68][69] Beaten Frowns After features a grey unravelling scroll on a vacant horizon, with newspaper folds similar to a brain's creases,[34] being likened by Teen Ink writer Sydney Leahy to the patient's potential awareness of the disease's progression.

In March 2018, Kirby was featured at Festival Présences électronique [fr] in Paris,[104] where he played a version of the 1944 song "Ce Soir" by singer Tino Rossi.

Pitchfork contributor Miles Bowe described Stage 4 as avoiding "a risk of pale romanticization",[25] and Goldner felt that the record had "broken the loop", although he added that "Temporary Bliss State" is not "real dementia".

"[12] Luka Vukos, in his review for the blog HeadStuff, argued that the "empathy machine" of the series "is characterized not by words" but rather "rests in [Kirby's] marrying of [the vinyl record] with the most contemporary modes of digital recall and manipulation.

[17][117] Everywhere at the End of Time is regarded by several critics and musicians, including James Webster of vaporwave group Death's Dynamic Shroud, as Kirby's magnum opus within the Caretaker alias.

[15][139][140] Daily Record writer Darren McGarvey claimed he felt "struck by a deep sense of gratitude" after finishing the series, stating that is the "power of a proper piece of art", while author Cole Quinn called Everywhere the greatest album of all time.

[142] Later in October, users on the social media platform TikTok created a challenge of listening to the entire series in one sitting, due to its long length and existential themes.

[143][144][145] Kirby knew about the phenomenon from an exponential growth of views on the series' YouTube upload, over 36 million as of 2 March 2025;[7] only 12% of them came from the platform's algorithm, whereas direct searches made up over 50%.

"[152] The series was also popularized for its relation to the Backrooms, a creepypasta about an endless empty office space, which writer Silvia Trevisson said stemmed from their similar portrayals of absurd states of mind.

One Iowa State University researcher found the series to present the "chilling reality" of Alzheimer's disease, highlighting the gradual progression of calmness into confusion.