I just got back from spending 2 weeks in Japan. I took my family to attend the 1-year memorial service of my father's passing. We had a great time, though traveling with 2 little kids proved to be a challenge.

I sent off the CD to mastering before I left, and the masters should be in the mail box as I write this. I made some connections with people in Japanese music industry and I was able to have a few of them listen to my album (I took a pre-master final mix). The responses were overwhelmingly positive. They ranged from "I really like it" to "Wow!" All in all, I got a solid affirmation about my music's value in Japanese market.

What was particularly gratifying was the fact that everyone who heard it really liked it, but all for different reasons. One person pointed out punk influences I didn't know I had, while another person called my music "manly," which was not the adjective I would have used. A couple of people I trust immensely commented on how impressed they were with my vocals! I do make my music with hopes of having different parts appeal to different people -- a guitarist acquaintance did notice my guitar tones and arrangements, for example, while another person really dug my lyrics. This makes for a very rewarding music for repeated listening -- each time the listener notices something else. Music has layers -- hopefully it has a pretty cover that grabs the listener on the first listen, but it also has depth that is worth digging into. If anything, I think my music is longer on the depth than on catchiness, though I think it's a lot catchier than most indie music. I would personally group my music along with artsier and more challenging of major label acts -- Pearl Jam, Tool, Radiohead, Tori Amos etc.

Anyway, the album's production now concluded, I'm moving on to packaging and promotion -- I need to create the album cover design and launch a new web site and MySpace page -- and with that also brings questions about the state of this web site, HashiMusic.com. Hashi Music is a DBA (doing business as -- basically a business name) I created to house my music business, now primarily film scoring and producing. But I'm unavailable to do neither, and will probably remain so for a while. My basic career plan for the next few years is to basically record my own music and market them, while holding down a regular day job as a web professional. HashiMusic.com is not the idea platform to launch and promote a recording artist, so I have a different domain name and site design in mind.

What will probably happen is that I'll simplify HashiMusic.com simply as an archive/showcase of my work as a musician, from production to film scoring to songwriting. And perhaps split the blog into two -- one for Ari the recording artist and one personal, hosted elsewhere.

Anyway, with an album of my own music, I feel like I'm transitioning into a different place. It's pretty cool.