Death Jokes II is a celebration of endings and of deaths, marking the end of the project of Damon McMahon AKA: Amen Dunes, itself. This is the last chapter of the final volume. Goodbye, I’ve barely said a word to you, but it’s always like that at parties – we never really see each other, we never say the things we should like to; in fact it’s the same everywhere in this life. Let’s hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged.

Amen Dunes was founded in 2006 with D.I.A., an album he recorded on an 8-track recorder in a trailer in Upstate New York. It grew from there, with McMahon releasing 6 full-length albums and 2 EPs over the last 18 years. Today he releases the 7th and final album, Death Jokes II, a reworked version of his May 2024 Sub Pop debut, Death Jokes.

Death Jokes was a complex project that took close to four years to complete and was recorded in various iterations, including an alternate version of the album recorded in June of 2021 at the famed East West Studios in Los Angeles (in the “Pet Sounds” and the haunted “Whitney Houston” rooms) with Money Mark (Beastie Boys) on keyboards, and both Jim Keltner (Bob Dylan et. al) and Carla Azar (Autolux) on drums.

In reimagining the album as Death Jokes II, McMahon revisited all that material for stripped down remixes of the songs by Craig Silvey. These new mixes also include unheard contributions from notable Death Jokes contributors Panoram, Kwake Bass (Dean Blunt, MF DOOM), Christoffer Berg (Fever Ray), and Robbie Lee, a multi-instrumentalist and NYC veteran.

Amen Dunes
Death Jokes II
Tracklist
Sub Pop Records

1. Ian (Sunriser)
2. What I Want (Night Driver)
3. Exodus (Do It)
4. Rugby Child (300 Miles Per Hour)
5. Purple Land (In The Springs)
6. Mary Anne (Senigallia)
7. Italy Pop Punk
8. I Don’t Mind (Q Loop)
9. Round the World (Down South)
10. Ian (Goodbye)