2 days ago I arrived in Japan with the rest of the family. It was a long journey from San Francisco, but relatively easy due to a direct flight to Haneda Airport. We did a quick stop in Tokyo for the night, spent one day taking care of errands and on the following evening boarded a domestic flight to Ishikawa Ken on the western side of Japan.

Our plan is to stay for 1 month in Japan while my wife undergoes a set of genetic examination procedures, to see if the doctors can determine the exact nature of her condition and determine a diagnosis. We will be visiting and consulting with several specialist physicians at various hospitals and hopefully this will finally bring some clarity around her syndrome.

At the same time I’m taking this chance to get my first honest vacation from work in several years. No time laid to waste though, I have 3 projects that I want to work on now that I have some time to focus.

The first is a series of tracks themed around the climate here on the western coast of Japan. The snow, hard winds and raging Sea of Japan has always fascinated me, and I want to see if I can create something that’s a mixture of ambient, IDM and sample based, texturized soundscapes that captures some of this.

The second is the new Native Instruments Maschine (MK2) which arrived in the mail the day before I left San Francisco. I carried it all the way down here so that we can get some quality time to get to know each other. I’m a huge fan of Maschine and I can’t wait to dig into the new features that 1.8 and the new controller brings. I want to focus this energy and time around exploring complextro tracks.

The third and last project is a sample library of sounds from Japan. In the rush to the airport I forgot to bring my Tascam recorder, but I have already ordered a replacement unit to the place we are staying at in Ishikawa Ken. My goal is to capture some of the typical sounds, environments and atmospheres of this beautiful place. If it turns out ok I’ll make it available for download somewhere.

I’ll try to document as much as possible during the next 4-5 weeks here, so please check back regularly.

Thanks.