Out now via Mick Music, A Joy So Slow At Times I Don’t Think It’s Coming is the debut album from Slow Joy, the project of Dallas-based, New Mexican-born Chicano artist Esteban Flores.

The album offers an “emotionally charged journey through themes of grief, identity, and resilience,” all shaped by Flores’s experience as a Mexican-American artist.

Flores shares:

A Joy So Slow At Times I Don’t Think It’s Coming is my first album in my entire life. It’s a celebration of the complexities of life drawing from all the colors of emotion. From ecstatic to disparaging, from lighthearted to dark, the album is everything I wanted my debut to be. It’s meant to be listened to from start to finish and take you on a journey through the stories of life, love, and grief.  

Slow Joy combines Shoegaze, Grunge bite, and Punk sensibilities to create Alternative music.

Produced by Mike Sapone (Oso Oso, The Front Bottoms) and recorded at Ghost Hit Recording in Springfield, MA and Sonic Ranch in El Paso, TX, the album also has elements of “visual narrative.”

Flores’ uses recurring masked characters, including the Bull and the Sugar Skull, to “embody chaos and grief,” appearing throughout the album art and music videos as “evolving reflections of the emotional world behind the songs.”