Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of that year. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to realize. The albums in between include Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly (Relative Pitch), Molecular Affinity with Pauline Oliveros (Roaratorio), and Reality and Other Imaginary Places, with Michael Wimberly (ESP-Disk").