Work on what eventually became this album started in Feb 2019, believe it or not, although back then, I had a completely different music style than I do now.

I originally wanted to make a fully instrumental synth-based album, telling the story of some man named Jim who goes through an ordinary day of his life and eventually discovers the meaning of music.

The idea was to have "chapters" and the music would reflect that, such as:

=Start of the day=

=Daily Errands=

=Night on the Town=

=Back Home, Time to relax=

=Dream=

=The Meaning of Music=

Serious work on the project commenced in late 2019.

Over the next year, a bunch of songs were recorded for this project, but unfortunately, I couldn't get much cooperation from my (then) bandmates, and in my opinion, much of the material wasn't quite up to par, it eventually was scrapped in Jan 2021, and the band broke up and was in a hiatus state for a while.

A few months later, while jamming with Domm, I asked him if he wanted to join Cellophane Company and we could get the ball rolling again, he agreed, and we got to work.

The first thing we decided to record was a single.

We tried a couple of songs before discovering (and recording) Broken Hearted Pirates, check out the BHP page HERE for the full story. After we were done with the BHP single, it was clear the next thing to do was the debut album.

We had several ideas on how to revive the original project, but in the end, we decided to write some new songs and reuse some of the "better" old material.

Enter, Blast Off.

Sessions for the new album commenced in mid-2021, with the first proper recording session consisting of jamming on an organ which eventually morphed into the basic backing track for Far Out City. The recording sessions for Landlocked Dream followed shortly after.

I made some decent progress recording this new record, but unfortunately, Domm got real sick around this time after receiving the "jab" to keep his job. (You know what I mean.)

It was around this time, I started talking to a fella named Rokudai Tanaka, whom I met on my friend Shu's Discord server in 2020. We started collaborating on songs for fun, and it turned out we had good chemistry.

Eventually, after collaborating on a few more songs, I asked Rokudai if he wanted to join the group, and he agreed!

While working with Rokudai, my musical style shifted to a more mid-60s sound. 

It's a style I've always wanted to try since I've mostly only listened to that kind of music.

Out of this shift spawned Blast Off (Title Song) which was inspired by a painting on my wall that I found at a yard sale a while back.

In December 2021, we released the single Far Out City / Walking Dead as a stopgap because the album was taking a bit longer to produce than I originally thought.

Once the new year began, work on the album resumed.

After about a month and a half of tedious production and recording, "Blast Off...." was done.

And to top it all off, Rokudai painted a wonderful album cover inspired by the original "Blast Off" painting!

What can I say it's released and I'm relieved haha.

My favorite track on this album probably is Blast Off (Title Track), because while recording it, I had a feeling of "This is finally it, the last recording session for this album that's gone through production hell and back."

I also like the fact that it's a multilingual pop album, I don't think there are many albums of that sort.

Rokudai was even a little worried about this fact at first and suggested I come up with English lyrics for all his songs, but I insisted his tracks should stay like they were.

I'm pretty sure more than 90% of the people who listened to Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto in 1961 had no idea what he was actually saying, but non-the-less the people loved the music itself, which to me is all that matters.

Anyway, I hope you find a track on it that you dig! 

-Paul