Written and Produced by Luin Joy
Cover image: Luin and his beloved friend, Daniel Striped Tiger, in his backyard in Durham, NC
Copyright Luin Joy 2026, all rights reserved.
NEW CREATURE
This album is a memoir, a poem, and an act of devotion. It is a time capsule and an invitation to individuate. It’s an anti-genre portal. It’s an overdue book, a queer notion, and a sonic sculpture. It’s a hall of mirrors, a gag, and a ritual. It is deeply trans and tender. It’s a recurring dream, a joyful triumph, and a rain barrel gathering water. It is a love letter, a gift, and a sycamore tree.
JANUARY 8TH, 2026
This album has been my companion while becoming a new creature. It taught me how to build joy from pain and allowed my heart to remain open. It traces a long process of learning to embrace my voice and harness its healing power to make magic through music. The sounds in this collection come from my dense archive of field recordings and studio sessions. They stretch across time (2017-2025) and a wide range of habitats:
Parks and swamps in Georgia.
Homes, forests, and garages in North Carolina.
Public radio sermons.
A rocky beach in Maine. Jubilee Baptist Church in Chapel Hill.
The YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly.
Churches, cold streets, and basements in Chicago.
The Northern Lights over Black Mountain.
My grandmother’s yard in rural New Hampshire.
Cicadas fresh from the earth.
Synthesizers in rural Wisconsin.
Marsh windchimes, a trailer park, and a tattoo shop in California.
The frozen pond at my mom’s house in Vermont.
A wet cave in Ohio.
My car, my chest, and the sky.
I have always used art to imagine myself into being. My practice is an anchor, a loving witness, and a tool for regeneration. It helps me establish a tether between my present and my potential. It allows me to see the future and bring dreams into form. Transness is the substrate of my life; its a multi-dimensional, evolving omnipresence that brings great wonder and clairvoyance, as well as hardship, to my existence. It’s a demanding, endlessly creative experience. For centuries, trans people have served as visionary master world-builders. We are unruly, wildly creative, divine human animals. Empowered through multiplicity. Flesh, bone, courage, and magic. We refuse containment, extermination, linearity, and insufferable social norms. Our paths demand that we invest in possibility, release illusions of control, and remember that true belonging requires us to be who we are.
My creative momentum comes from this realm of collective dreaming and extends far beyond me. The main assignment is to surrender and allow creation to happen. I trust that this work has purpose. I know that it belongs in / to the world and I try not to allow my personal fears, impatience, or doubts get in the way of that.
This collection holds years of energy, memories, and sensations from different places, communities, and versions of self. It has been a lesson in faith and patience that began to take shape in 2021 and moved at its own pace, challenging me to wait and see.
Eventually, it reached its final form on January 8th, 2026; exactly 10 years after I began my medical transition in Savannah, Georgia at 22 years old. Right on time.
Throughout this decade of devotion, I have shed many skins and I look forward to shedding more. I am eternally grateful for young Luin who decided to trust his own quiet, inner voice and take a chance on our potential. I continue to be in awe of his strength. If he hadn’t been so brave and determined, I wouldn’t be here today, this work would not exist, and I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to know myself as I do now. Wild, expansive, and whole.
May this work deliver divine permission and contagious freedom to all who listen.
May it serve as an aquifer of self-possession.
May it empower you to act on your desires.
May it challenge your self-doubt, stagnancy, and fear.
May it accompany you as you become a new creature.
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. There is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
Martha Graham
Thank you to everyone who supported this project and contributed to its becoming. Creation never happens in a vaccuum and I am forever grateful to all those who encouraged, witnessed, and inspired me, listened to my works in-progress, supported my healing, believed in this vision, and poured love into my life. Special thanks to:
Leslie Allison
Sarah Milko
Sunny Rucker
Alexis Brunkow
Tracy McKee
Susan Wagner Carlson
Zach Cooper
Christina Ruiz
KT Starr
Bella Winkler
Lyn Belisle
Michelle Belto
Joy Barry
The Enso Circle
David Getsy
Janet Desaulniers
Lin Hixson
Nicolas Collins
Heidi Gruner
School of the Alternative
Seamus Carey
Micky Eilish
Jessica Castro-Rappl
Anna Maynard
Amanda Miller
Carrie Young
Sophia Stopper
Adrian Wood
Mick Prescott
Alexander Nelson
Track credits and sampled media:
2. FOR THE INTERIM TIME - poem by John O’Donohue
3. BOY LIKE ME
- cover of “Do What You Gotta Do” by Nina Simone
- sample of Clair de Lune played on an electric organ
4. EXACTLY WHAT WE’RE WAITING FOR -cover of Head Over Feet by Alanis Morissette
5. SANDPAPER SANDWICH
- sample of the Fron2 by Fron Reilly
6. BOX SHAPED HEART
- cover of Amber Mark’s version of “Heart Shaped Box” by Nirvana
10. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FILL A SWAMP - composed with Bella Winkler on keys
11. VILE AFFECTIONS
- sample of “You’ve Always Been” by Unspoken - Chicago NPR
13. ONLY WAY TO SURVIVE THE BEGINNING - altered cover of “The Big Day” by Chance The Rapper
19. COMPASSION AND GRACE
- steps 4, 5, 8 and 9 of the 12 steps
- sample of Clair de Lune
21. MIMIC OCTOPUS
- outro song, “Alkaline Alkaline” by Ahmoudou Madassane
1995