With this album, Fossil Aerosol returns to the damaged media and decomposing mediums of the late 20th century. The basic tracks were recorded in 2010, and were remixed and remastered in 2014. The source material for the work consists of dissociated fragments from nearly-lost genre films of the 1970s, filtered by scratched celluloid, bad splices, dropouts, and damaged control tracks.

The Day 1982 Contaminated 1971 was released on vinyl by the Helen Scarsdale Agency in 2015. The first 200 copies of the pressing included fragments of 1970s intermission film, recovered from an abandoned drive-in theater during the early 1980s and affixed to the cover art of the album.