As the first "new" John Henry material to be released since 2011, Annals is a collection of songs which were written between 1987 and 2013, but which never were recorded for a variety of reasons. Chief among these reasons was the lack of the proper tools and experience to do them what I considered to be justice at the time. But, due to a renewed desire to make music after a significant hiatus, in 2025, a major upgrade to Phantom Studios was completed, which included converting to a digital workflow that enabled much of the production needs that I wanted for some of these tracks. Others from the lot had been only partially written, or I didn't like something about the chords or lyrics, or they just got overlooked for not quite fitting any active project. But all of these tunes have been toiling in my mind for decades, and I felt compelled to get them out before I moved on to fresher pastures.

The cover art was created using Google Gemini, plus a few custom flourishes.