These first releases flitted from bursts of noise (September 1939) to gaseous ambiance (We Cannot Escape The Past) to subtly-soaked moments of outright beauty (Stardust).
Reynolds identifies it as a shift in the sound, "disorienting in its scale and abstraction", with his period 2005-2008 "exploring similar zones of queasy amorphousness".
[5] Doran also sees the album as "a change in direction for the project conceptually, as it started to explore different aspects of memory loss as the music itself became more texturally and structurally complex.
Vague clouds of noise, barely flickering signals of life, only the starkest traces of past romanticism (no matter how poignant)- nothing to cling onto.
"[6] Mark Fisher contrasts this album with the Caretaker's previous output: "If his earlier records suggested spaces that were mildewed but still magnificent - grand hotels have gone to seed, long-abandoned ballrooms - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia invokes sites that have deteriorated into total dereliction, where every unidentified noise is pregnant with menace.
"[8] Persistent Repetition of Phrases combines an overt interest in amnesia and memory distortion, with a more melodic piano-centered atmosphere, with fewer recognizable samples than the Haunted Ballroom period: "After a few minutes you realize that something is stuck...Each song is tightly looped, a single event, chasing its resignation.
[9] At the time, this album was seen as his masterpiece, with Kirby describing himself as "surprised" by the level of reception, as it was created in a "bleak" and difficult period of his life.
[11] During this time, Kirby released Sadly, the Future Is No Longer What It Was under his own name, which was described by Pitchfork as "music of stasis that doesn't announce itself as much as it seeps.
Titles inspired new ideas as did the audio itself"[18] He cites Al Bowlly specifically, whose music is featured prominently in The Shining, as a key touchstone: "He was the golden voice of his generation, but he was killed by a parachute mine outside his London home.
[7] The Caretaker's original website suggested it to "fans of the darker isolationist ambient work of modern composers such as William Basinski, Nurse with Wound, Aphex Twin, Fennesz and Brian Eno".
Following Fisher's death, the Caretaker released Take Care, It's a Desert Out There as a memorial album, after one of the writer's quotes, with proceeds going to the mental health charity Mind.
[24] He identifies the "crackle" of vinyl as "the principle sonic signature of hauntology" which "makes us aware that we are listening to a time that is out of joint",[24] signaling "the return of a certain sense of loss" which "invokes the past and marks our distance from it".
Fisher contributed liner notes to Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, describing it as "uneasy listening"; in contrast to the Caretaker's earlier works, "the threat is no longer the deadly sweet seduction of nostalgia.
With British-born Kirby having lived and worked for many years in Berlin and Kraków, the press release for Everywhere at the End of Time compares the project to Brexit: "Both started in 2016 and are due to wrap up in spring 2019.
"[13] Jon Fletcher described the Caretaker as "one of this decade's most innovative, heartbreaking and downright eerie musical projects has been playing to shadows under dimmed lights for the past 12 years".
[28] In 2020, the completed Everywhere at the End of Time went viral on TikTok, with users telling one another to listen to the entire six-and-a-half-hour album series in one sitting.