I. D U S T I N

I met Dustin Montgomery at the VFW hall in Monticello, in 2007. Must have been June. His band Strike the Choir was releasing their first album, and it was my first show. He was wearing a fedora.

My pops' drummer's daughter was dating Dustin at the time, so they introduced me, and I tried my best not to tell him just how much I had been listening to STC on purevolume... It wasn't long after that I would become a part of the STC friend group, even though I was 13 at the time. I remember giving him the first ever nouns song (then I labeled my songs under 'thecopskilledkenny') on a CD-R at a Maylene show a few months after, and I'm sure he probably thought it was terrible... who knows.

He ultimately led me to becoming best friends with DJ, who I'm in the band 1955/NISé with to this day (since 2008.)

at the end of 2007, Dustin and I talked for hours about how I wanted to go to film school. I remember that vividly, and he told me "just do it." I was in film school when he passed, but that would be in 2017.

I remember being at his house in 2012, reading Calvin and Hobbes together after class... we hyped each other enough to get C&H tattoos. I got mine, he said he'd get his later (he didn't, lol)

I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this. We were in so many failed bands over the years together. We recorded together and never did anything with it, because we never thought to. We loved listening to HORSE the Band together. We loved Mega Man 2. We loved playing COD together at noon time in between classes… I loved laying on his bed and watching him arrange tracks for his project The Hacking. For years I left him voicemails constantly doing this stupid impression of a South Park character. We’d watch Cardiacs videos together and laugh at how fucking cool and weird it was. He helped DJ and I enormously during our production of our 2008 record, and of our 2015—current album, making videos for us, and all that… and when he got sick with his addiction… when he got sick, he didn’t stop being one of my best friends… he didn’t stop being Dustin. I just stopped calling as much. And so did he. We spent time together at a new years party to bring in 2017 and then… Two months went by without talking, and I got a call from DJ.

I was about to take a shower, but I saw DJ’s name pop up and I knew. I knew before I answered. Dustin.

DJ told me Dustin had hanged himself, and I asked if he got to the hospital okay.

And then I fell to my knees.

Of course he hadn’t. Natalie found him, still up in his closet.

At his funeral, they played “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd over the PA. And my cousin Trey and I were trying our hardest not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation, though it was coming through, through snotty tears. His ma went 2 months later.

MyHandstoWar played a big show in his honor. It was wonderful. We were all there crying.

And after that, I spent years making jokes about Dustin’s death. I spent years revisiting his death in lyrics that were never released. Until finally, I decided I was just angry with him. Very angry with him. And I needed to say it as bluntly as possible. I’ve shed so many tears over this guy at this point, that I can’t any longer. I don’t want to think about him anymore. I love him, but I can’t do it. Each time I think of him, I forget a little more about him. I can’t remember his voice anymore, and barely his face, and it’s only been 4 years since he left us. He was my biggest musical inspiration, other than DJ and my dad.

II. SADAKIYO

I met Schwinn on that balcony thing above Vino’s in 2013. The first thing we talked about was Paul Baribeau’s song about the wild blue eyes. Or maybe it was that new scratchy-looking tattoo on her thigh. Something about Audrey Hepburn. I remember laying on some dirty bed one day crying together the next year, listening to Days n Daze and talking about… how things had gone all wrong somewhere along the way. We weren’t where we wanted to be. We both had our own addictions and Little Rock certainly hadn’t helped us relieve ourselves from them. I never had the heart to tell her I didn’t like the Harmony Korine movies as much as she did. She loved those films. Hell, I’m not sure I understand them. She was real tough, way tougher than I, but you could get her to laugh pretty well if you joked about oogles. Many times I thought she was wise beyond her years. I never really got to tell her just how much I loved her, after we stopped talking as much in 2017. She died in 2018. A lot of the kids at her service were at Dustin’s the year prior.

I met Natalie in 2014, on the porch of Tyler and Elgin’s in that shitty little cul de sac where everyone else in LR got robbed that one summer. Forget the address, but remember the house fairly well. We stayed up all night chain smoking… I can’t even remember what we talked. I think mostly about not fitting in with the general scene in LR at the time. But around 8am, with the sun blinding us and us sober enough to see it shine a little too brightly, we decided to call it quits. We went on to record and write here and there, though mostly we just liked to spend time with one another and her roommates— Dustin, DJ, Justin, and Gary. I didn’t think the last time we’d ever spend time together before Dustin’s death and the Giant Departure of the Keightly House would be us watching Parks and Rec in her room all night. It was her suggestion, not mine. After Dustin though, we were all shocked, and the friend group stopped talking as much altogether. Natalie was shy, but very goofy. She knew exactly how to make me laugh. She kept making these origami swan things, and hanging them up around her room. I just remembered that now. Trey gave me the call in 2019. I didn’t want to go to the service.

2018, my best friend Nubz. 2019, my second best friend Bella. Rat terrier and a boxer. Can’t talk too much about that or I actually will lose my shit trying to explain this album.


On the first piece of the album, I wanted you to feel like you were trapped with me, trapped with my anguish toward Dustin’s death. And then I wanted you to be released. The main idea was to have the album feel as though you’re surfing the 500 channels, but each time you click the remote, the same actors are on screen, just in different situations, until eventually, you end up on one of those informecials that make you feel... out of place with yourself. Though this was originally just a major theme for the composition because I wanted it to be, I began to relate it to how I view the way I’ve tried to escape my feeling toward death, or losing friends. You will lose friends to that Thing, or to them being pieces of shit, or you being a piece of shit, or to time, to time, and to time again. And if you’re angry with that, or angry with those old friends for dying and leaving… that’s okay. Just be angry. Let it out, and then let it go. Or never let it go. I guess it doesn’t matter. During the second half of this LP, I couldn’t stop thinking of my love for Schwinn and Natalie and for Dustin, and for any living friends that left without a good reason… just anything like that… Even though I was aiming for something more positive storytelling-wise with the sound, my mindset was still that of someone hurting.


Somehow the anger toward death then went toward the living, and we end up with a few stanza directed at you, and at me, and then at you again. Even sort of harken to the days of satire with making fun of still bummed fans at one point, which gives me a good smile to hear. I think, very often, I feel misunderstood; this alias for my bedroom music was once mine… but now it’s everyone else’s, and it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It makes me feel as though I can’t explore all the genres of music I truly want to explore under the same name. And that makes me sad and angry. So I guess some of that comes through.

At the end of the day, though I am released from that anger… and at the end of the same day, what am I doing, other than just sitting with my friends in Discord? Old friends and New friends, at that. Everything seems really bad sometimes, but really… it isn’t.



I spent two weeks experimenting with tape loops and samples and a lot of fabricated noise to get quite a few of the sounds on the record, the main influences or references for/on it (I made a list at the time of recording) are The Hacking, HORSE the Band, heroin, Johann Johannson, Batman, 20th Century Boys, Joy Division again, Twilight Zone again, Love Exposure, My Dinner with Andre, Zach and Pants playing Escape from Tarkov, the young night drifters phenomenon, Naoki Urasawa, Kazuo Umezz, Milemarker, my conversations with Jono about Yuk Hui, Oxbow, Coheed and Cambria, Bear vs Shark, Have Heart, Fat Jon, Nujabes, Ozu, Juzo Itami, Obayashi, Ikiru, and Metal Gear Solid, I feel that my love for hip hop and jazz came through a lot stronger in this release, but that’s to be expected

I wanted to force the listener into situations that they must meditate upon their sadness, and then meditate upon their relaase from this sadness… Though, I feel should have made the meditative movements a bit longer.

microphones used:
beexcellent gm-1 gaming headset
and then those broke, so I used my mac’s built-in microphone.

banjos, mandolin, guitars, side drums (end of “D U S T I N”,) bass, vst’s and arrangement were all just done by me again. It is difficult where I live to get people together so I will probably continue to record many songs by myself, to varying degrees of release.

i thought before i uploaded the LP that I was going to die, and that no one would ever hear it… I had a real bad anxiety that I may die in my sleep before it came out…. Glad it’s out.

thank you