THE EARLY CATALOG & STREAMING

A Statement from Disabled Parker

As Disabled Parker moves forward following the release of The Gradual Unmaking, we have made the decision to remove all Disabled Parker albums and releases that came before The Gradual Unmaking from streaming services.

This is something we've thought about carefully, and we want to explain exactly what this decision means, why we're making it, and what will happen to these releases going forward.

First and most importantly: these releases are not being erased.

They are still Disabled Parker releases. They are still part of our history, and we have no intention of pretending they never existed. Their artwork, tracklists, credits, physical editions, photographs, and history will continue to be documented. Physical copies will remain part of the Disabled Parker catalog and may continue to be available.

The only major change is that these releases will no longer be available on streaming services.

WHY WE'RE REMOVING THEM

Disabled Parker has changed enormously since those early recordings were made.

A lot of our earliest music was created while we were still figuring out what this band was supposed to be. We were learning how to write, record, produce, and put together full releases. There are ideas from that period that we're still proud of, and those records played an important role in getting us where we are today.

But we also don't believe that much of that material represents the standard we've reached or the band that Disabled Parker has become.

When somebody discovers Disabled Parker for the first time, our streaming catalog is often their introduction to the band. We want that catalog to represent the music we stand behind today and the direction we're moving in.

For us, The Gradual Unmaking represents that point.

It wasn't the first Disabled Parker album, and we will never present it as one. There is an entire history before it. But it represents a major turning point in our music, our production, our writing, our visual identity, and our understanding of what we wanted Disabled Parker to be.

Because of that, The Gradual Unmaking will become the earliest Disabled Parker release remaining on streaming services.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE OLD RELEASES?

They're not disappearing.

The albums and releases from before The Gradual Unmaking will become, in a sense, an archived portion of the Disabled Parker catalog.

Physical releases will continue to exist. CDs, cassettes, records, artwork, booklets, and other material from those releases are still legitimate pieces of Disabled Parker history. We aren't asking people to forget them, and we're certainly not taking them away from the people who already own them.

Information about these releases will also remain available online. We believe our history should be documented accurately, including the parts of it that don't necessarily represent where we are today.

If you own one of these releases physically, you own a real part of that history.

And as streaming versions disappear, those physical editions will become one of the primary ways that the original releases can still be heard as they existed at the time.

WE DON'T HATE OUR PAST

Removing these records shouldn't be interpreted as us saying that everything we made before The Gradual Unmaking was worthless.

It wasn't.

Without those records, there would be no The Gradual Unmaking.

Every unfinished idea, bad decision, experiment, recording mistake, strange song, successful moment, and complete failure taught us something. You can hear a band trying to figure itself out across those releases.

There are things we would do completely differently today. There are things we probably wouldn't release today at all. There are also moments from those records that we still genuinely love.

That's part of having a history.

We would rather allow that history to exist honestly than rewrite it.

THE GRADUAL UNMAKING AND EVERYTHING AFTER

Going forward, our streaming presence will begin with The Gradual Unmaking.

For us, that album marks the beginning of the Disabled Parker that exists today.

Everything before it shows how we got here.

Everything after it shows where we're going.

That distinction matters to us.

The old catalog isn't being destroyed, censored, or declared nonexistent. It's simply being moved out of the active streaming catalog and into the band's history.

There may always be people who prefer those early records. Some people may have discovered Disabled Parker through them. Certain songs might have memories attached to them that mean far more to a listener than they do to us.

We don't want this decision to take any of that away.

If one of those records means something to you, it still means something.

THANK YOU

To everyone who listened to those records when they were new, bought physical copies, shared songs with friends, followed the band during those years, or supported us before The Gradual Unmaking existed: thank you.

Those releases captured Disabled Parker at a particular point in time. They're imperfect, they're strange, and some of them are very far removed from the band we've become.

But they're ours.

They happened.

And they'll always be part of the story.

We're just ready for the streaming catalog to represent what Disabled Parker is now.

The past will remain documented.
The physical releases will remain.
The history isn't changing.

We're just moving forward.

— Alexander Hunter