"I Can't Stop Dreaming" is the name of one of my albums from 2003. I'm listening to it today.

It's funny, making music. When you make a track, you can listen to it a few times but it's not really that interesting. But once it's aged a few years, it acquires new odors and hidden flavors are revealed too.

For me, when i listen to this album, I remember exactly what my life was like when I made it --- which is quite different from my other albums. I began the first track on a saturday and finished the last one on a monday --- and during those three days I moved to my new apartment. It was in a part of Japan called Dojo --- yes, the same name as a martial arts dojo. Totally removed from everything, out in the countryside. The apartment was part of the Leopalace chain, and living there was a lot like living in a "U store it, u lock it, u keep the key" unit. A very distinctively artificial room, but not like a hotel, cuz there was no front desk. Two convenience stores were the only places to eat in Dojo that I knew of, and each was 30 minutes walk away --- super far, for Japan.

I had just bought a midi keyboard and had gone from laboriously programming tracks note-by-note in Reason sequencers to actually just banging out chords, a huge jump. That makes these tracks melody-heavy, with simplistic drum samples...

it's hard to explain cuz you weren't there. but this album is "typically Dojo" in my mind. It reminds me of why I make music --- not for the myself of now, but as a time capsule for the me of five years later.

I want to make music until I'm dead.