Albany post-hardcore collective Self Defense Family put out their Performative Guilt EP nearly a year ago to the day. And now, after trawling through their archives, they’re back with two songs collected in a new release called Kitten Beach. As the band explain in a statement on Bandcamp:

We’re cleaning out our hard drives for your quarantine entertainment. Demos that we forgot about, sessions that were lost to a congested release schedule, and a few bizarre missteps. We’ll do our best forensics on these, but I expect some mysteries in here. For art, we’re going into friends’ Instagrams and asking if we can use their photo. That’s it. Keeping this fun because so many people are sad right now. Expect a few hidden gems, some chaff, and more than a few truly weird tracks.

Kitten Beach is what our friend Jessie calls her living room. She’s been rescuing and fostering cats for decades. The cats hid while we banged out these strange dirges on a day off from tour. I believe the tracks are about loss, though I can’t say for certain what I was going through at the time. Something sad, apparently, because I’m referencing finding a body in Florida. Carbon dating puts this session at 2014.

Thank you to Jessie and her cats.

Listen to “Florida Trip” and “Tissue Thin” below.