Content Warning: Themes of police violence, racism, wildfires, family death, and animal death.

Lockdown Diary began innocently as a 2019 resolution to document every month of 2020. With the unprecedented challenges that disrupted life throughout the year, such as the pandemic, wildfires, personal loss, and political upheaval, the 14-track album developed into an embodiment of the crunchy chaos, pounding perseverance, and surreal humor that defined 2020. In the album, the instrumental songs are paired with an essay describing the personal and technical changes that shaped its production in addition to providing a collection of daily poems written alongside it.

Matthew Watson is an Oregon-born poet, artist, and short story writer. In the summer of 2018, he began composing chiptunes after his gender transition, drawn by the medium’s nostalgic quality and generative limitations, which are restrictions imposed on art by tools that necessitate creative solutions. For Matthew’s binary music and accompanying artwork, this means working with the barest of logical tools, off and on. Currently, Matthew has begun releasing chiptunes under the moniker, Bit Riot.