Kirby did not plan out making a record like "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World", and the album was made because of "pure chance in action at all times." The making of the album started when he shopped at a Brooklyn store in December 2010 and bought a ten-dollar collection of numerous old ballroom music records. He wouldn't use the records for a while until he was in a Berlin flat, where he spent around a month tracking them by playing them on a broken turntable and transferring the recordings to a digital recorder he obtained while vacationing in Spain during the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull. Then, by the time he moved to another flat, he edited and mixed the recordings. The artwork for "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World" was created by Kirby's long-time friend Ivan Seal, and is named "Happy in Spite".