2026-07-25 ・・・ a tokyo album retrospective

recently, i concluded an album of songs i made while i lived abroad in japan.

not finished, but concluded. they have been finished for months now. compositionally, nothing has changed since summer 2024. mixing briefly got an update in spring 2025. mastering was done in one focused pass in early winter 2025 sometime. to put it briefly, they've been stored like a time capsule. in numerous ways, they literally are that. freeze frames of moments in time, ways to take me back to when i felt most whole.

but finally, i have done them the way i wanted to.

the cover art and back page of the CD booklet! wowie!

it's not often things feel 'done' to me, like i had no second thoughts or aspects i would change. so in this way i feel a certain sense of satisfaction, the closure that never comes has found its way to me. it's not closure in a grand sense, but it's something. these songs are done, and that is that. they are now burned to disc and traveling through postal networks as i write this.

i had no intention to make a package or set of artifacts from these songs as i gradually pieced them together. i started these as i do most songs: on a whim. even now, after all the effort and time and emotions spent, i don't feel these have anything special to them as a piece of art or a musical statement. they still feel like a whim, a moment when i decided to sit at our little kitchen table in tokyo and putz around with a synth. but gradually they began to strike me as more than just that. in the most not-me move possible, i allowed myself to believe that they can be special simply because they are special to me. and because they are special to me, i decided to give them all the life i could. sappy, but true.

i feel these songs are special because, to me, they functioned both as the deed and the testimony, so to speak. the fateful event itself as well as the historical recounting afterwards. a resonance coursing through my body to my life into my music through my life into my body. when i open myself up to them, they in turn open back up to me. i physically remember making them, living the moments that inspired them, feeling emotions that i was so thankful and blessed to have coursing within me possessing, this time, potency instead of merely a dilution.

while i feel more open and honest now, there's still lingering pangs of incongruity with my life now. lessons i may have to learn and relearn. a malaise has set in on my life again, who knows when they will sour and turn me cold again. at least this time i know to trust myself when something feels wrong. whether i act on it immediately is another issue.

summary time: this album acted as the emotional exhumant, the emotional conduit, and the emotional terminal for my alive self. not only that, but it was the first time i had been afforded any of those in my entire life.

i finally felt a harmony with my life, that i was truly resonant and centered. tiny details were opening up to me, and i could spread my soul into the air effortlessly. i felt whole and engaged. the value of giving yourself the space to breathe, to feel, eventually even to want more from yourself and your life.

whether i was skilled enough to capture any of that symbolically remains to be seen. i never make a song with the intent of expressing anything specific anyways, it's more than enough that people 'get' something from it. feeling alone is a blessing. but there is a piece of me, whole and light, that remains within them. can anyone pin it down? can you truly find me in them? if you listen, i look forward to hearing your thoughts.

i have to thank my wonderful fiance cat deeply for helping me commit to this. as is habitually the case when i drift out of touch with myself, the little things that would feel most like me slip through the cracks. the analysis growing so strong, defining how much of myself i can allow to be spread bare, suffocating my essence day by day until it feels foolish to allow myself to breathe and inevitable to dissuade myself from speaking, shouting, yelling my intent to take my place as a person among people, worthy as any other of laughing, failing, and moving forward on our own path. in so many ways, you encourage me and enable me and break down hurdles that thwart me from following through. you notice what i want to do, what feels like me, and you carefully, quietly, reliably place the tools in my hands to move towards them. you believe in me. thank you. i love you.

soon to be released on bandcamp :)