This is the first release by Thom Lucero. There have been many other releases under different names, with different groups, in different contexts. But this is the first release by Thom Lucero. Consider it a soft transition into a new chapter. One step towards self-actualization. In that general direction at least.

This album sprung from two simultaneous encounters in the spring of 2018- one with a small piece of musical equipment (the Teenage Engineering PO-33 sequencer), and the other with a place far from home (Japan). The resulting album, to me, speaks to a number of things: communication (between mediums, between people, between peoples), translation (what’s lost and what’s gained), expectation and imagination butting up against actual experience (especially in the context of travel), my inability to fully know anything about… anything, really. It’s also just a collection of wacky musical sketches.

My work has always been about these things- this is another rewording of that same sentence. Failure as a means of discovery. Analog and digital processes stitched together awkwardly. A general scruffiness.

I met an expat in Tokyo who said of it, “After a little while you get used to the fact that it’s basically Blade Runner, and then it’s just like any other city.” I can’t say if that’s actually true, but I see his point. Another said, “I moved here because I wanted to leave England, and I wanted to live in a city with clean toilets.” Fiction and myth and history and imagination—both cultural and personal—always funnel into the actual experienced reality of a place.

So this is not meant to be an authoritative portrait of Tokyo, or of Japan. Who could expect such a thing to even exist, especially coming from me? This is a highly subjective, highly abstracted bunch of doodles. If this is a portrait, it’s a cubist portrait, with the eyes all akimbo, and the nose is where the ears should be. The anatomy is inaccurate, but hopefully you get a sense of the feeling.

If anything it’s a self-portrait. But, much like the drawing on the cover, it doesn’t really look like me at all.

Which is all to say: this is the first release by Thom Lucero. There’s another currently in the works. The wheel keeps turning.




all phone recordings for samples made in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka from March 21 - April 4, 2018
Cover drawing by Thom Lucero, April 2018
Initial recordings made on 4-track cassette by Thom Lucero, April 8-24, 2018
Additional recordings made on 4-track cassette by Thom Lucero, Ben Varian, & Miles Wintner, May 19, 2018
All songs bounced from 4-track cassette to 1” reel-to-reel by Jonny Kosmo & Thom Lucero, June 15, 2018
Additional recordings made on 1” reel-to-reel by Thom Lucero & Jonny Kosmo, June 18, 2018
All songs bounced from 1” reel-to-reel to Garageband by Jonny Kosmo & Thom Lucero, June 18, 2018
"Dusk Cycle" vocals recorded by Shigeru Akakura, July 2018
All songs mixed digitally by Thom Lucero, August 2018
Digital mixes finalized September 7, 2018
Mastered by David Jerkovich, November 2018
Tapes dubbed with the help of Jungle Gym Records, March 2019
Layout by Miles Wintner, April 2019
Insert layout by Thom Lucero, June 2019
Tape released by Just_Umbrellas, July 2019