Composer and artist Zbigniew Karkowski and intermedia artist and sound engineer Brian O'Reilly recorded The Difficulty Of Being while working together at the now defunct Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco. Before his death in 2013 Karkowski spent three decades travelling around the world performing at festivals, and collaborating and recording with numerous musicians and artists.

In his review of The Difficulty Of Being in The Wire 364, Jim Haynes says: "The album unfurls through hard edit juxtapositions and destabilisations, and concludes with a transmission of sound so low in frequency it’s like a faint x-ray plume escaping a black hole. A fitting finale to one of the last documents from a dynamic composer."

The Difficulty Of Being is out on Monotype.