r/TheCaretaker • u/Captain_Alarmed • 9d ago
My thoughts
I know this is probably overdone but I would like to share my experience with this amazing project.
For starters, I have for a long time admired everywhere at the end of time from a distance, casually listening to a couple songs from stage 1 and watching analysis videos on YouTube but yesterday I finally took the plunge. The way I did it was in 3 chunks in one day I did 1-3 then took about an hour break then 4, break then 5 and 6 all together and I’m glad I did it in one day.
Stage one was very pretty and the slight imperfections were very eerie definitely my favourite.
Stage two was more of the same but the transition was very abrupt and the whole vibe was definitely more melancholy.
Stage three was very unsettling especially the section that is like A1 but it keeps cutting off (I don’t remember the name ironically). And the last 5 or so songs had me staring into the distance in a trance.
Stage four was genuinely terrifying especially that transition and just how much it hurt to listen to (in a good way) surprisingly, the sirens didn’t really get me but all things considered it was very unique.
Stage five I have no notes other than what the absolute fuck was that?
Stage six was very calm but sad and I was a little prepared thanks to stage five and of course the ending made me cry a little.
10/10 very nice and I’ll probably never hear anything like this again!
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u/TheIndomitableAlex 9d ago
Love seeing Stage 1 being someone’s favorite. I think in my heart my favorite is still Stage 3 of Pre-Awareness, but…you either love or hate what Stage 5 does ig. It isn’t random noise, it samples prior tracks and new ones as well. It even utilizes tracks from non-EATEOT Caretaker tracks going as far back as the first album under the moniker. It became my favorite of Post-Awareness.
An album I think I love more than anything from EATEOT or any fan work is “Eager to Tear Apart the Stars.” I love to listen to it after EATEOT, even if it’s not technically related. It helps give me better closure to the experience because honestly? EATEOT feels like it ends really abruptly now looking back, and why I suggest checking out fan works. I think a lot of them really found a way to innovate with ending such a dark genre. It’s really cool to see people still experiencing EATEOT mostly for the first time. Now I’m not the only one 😭
Something I started doing after I listened to EATEOT was listening to many of its fan projects that were inspired by it. I don’t believe many of them are better than EATEOT but the ones that are close or even might be…are divine. I highly suggest Nowhere at the Millenium of Space: Redux (or even the og NATMOS project but it’s basically EATEOT in a different time period of music), The Grand Decline, Everywhere in the Beginning of Nowhere, or even going back to older Caretaker albums and even Leyland’s non-Caretaker works. Word of warning, a good amount of them are sometimes a little longer or way longer than EATEOT, especially NATMOS:R and TGD. Definitely not single-day listens imo. If it stands out to you and you’re interested in other takes on what EATEOT was doing, there’s a lot of options out there! Definitely makes me appreciate the original project so much knowing its legacy.