Amen Dunes, the solo project of Damon McMahon, began with recordings made in the fall of 2006 in upstate New York. Those tapes were initially put on the shelf as personal recordings he never intended for release, and the following summer, McMahon moved to China and all but stopped making music. He would live in Beijing for the next few years, writing and recording only occasionally. With the release of DIA on Locust Music in 2009, however, he decided to move back to the States and form a band around Amen Dunes.