I started working on Slurry in May of 2019. I started out making a song for it every month, by the fall I was recording a new song every week. Some songs were never finished, some were cut. I felt like I could make songs like this indefinitely. I was excited that I'd finally found a production and recording style that could get the sound I had been aiming for. I finally lived on my own and didn't need to feel so nervous practicing instruments or singing around my family. By December of 2019, the album was about 70% done, most of the first 9 tracks were already finalized.

In 2020 the work I did on the album slowed significantly, partly because I was still working on Subterfuge, partly because I had other musical styles I wanted to explore, partly because I got a new, much more physically demanding job. Maybe it's because over the past 5 years since I started making "guitar music" I've sunk a couple thousand dollars into a hobby that has at this point returned exactly 1 dollar and 86 cents. Maybe it's because of the global pandemic that happened.

For the first half of 2020 I would occasionally record a short intro for one track, come up with a new melodic line to insert into an old track, I had at least three different ideas for how to close the album. From September 2020 to May 2021, I didn't work on the album at all. During that time I've barely listened to new music either.

Slurry is not exactly a "quarantine album", that's not how it was envisioned anyway, and aside from a couple lyrics in track 6 most of the album's thematic content predates the relevant event. It kind of inevitably became such a thing, though.

What is this? I don't know, it's like, nostalgia clashing with the present or something. It's singing about how fucked everything is to the tune of a children's hymn. It's trying to express something sincere with SoundClown-tier mashups. It's trying to find your own voice but knowing you just sound like your parents, it's trying to be My Bloody Valentine and coming out sounding like Newsboys. It's moving out of your parents house and going straight into the old folks' home. It's about inescapably being the product of a hostile environment, where the only reward for survival is fighting again the next day. It's about "home" being something you buy.

This is glide guitar and nonsensical intonation. This is just ripping off a bunch of people who did it better. This is trash compactors, broken air conditioners, music boxes, vacuum cleaners, everyday resonance, electrical noise, drum machines, untuned piano. This is my darkest thoughts and deepest dreams, phrases left snagged in my mind since forever, blended together with dead memes and whatever GPT happened to spit out, overwrought intentionality and random nonsense. It's something that isn't mine, but something nobody else knows.

Slurry is a mixture of shit.