It starts with sound.

A bassline drifting through a room, a snare crack bouncing off the walls of a club in a city you don’t know the name of yet. It starts with a moment—staring at a record sleeve in a Tokyo shop, watching light pool in the grooves, wondering how it will sound when the needle touches down. It starts in motion, on the road, in the studio, on a stage. It never really stops.

The Mattson 2’s Millennium—a shimmering, disco-lit collaboration with Toro y Moi—found its way onto The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the two of us slipping into character as grumpy mental ward orderlies, stealing instruments and hijacking the scene. Paradise captured the air of an endless, sun-washed afternoon, a nod to the lush soundscapes of Japanese City Pop. Vaults of Eternity: Japan was something else entirely—an offering, a reverent reinterpretation of Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the architects of the sound that first pulled me in, years before their records made it to streaming services.

We have recorded and released 15 albums, a catalog of moments—from deep jazz reverence to explosive psych-rock freakouts, collaborations with Ray Barbee, Tommy Guerrero, Money Mark (Beastie Boys), and Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi). Our reinterpretation of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme led jazz historian Ashley Kahn to say: “There is a depth of sincerity and reverence in what the Mattsons are doing that is unquestionable.” It landed at #1 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz charts, where Star Stuff—our full-length with Toro y Moi—had landed before it.

But music doesn’t just live in recordings. It moves. It travels. I’ve been on the road for 20 years, playing over 300 venues, 80 cities, and 14 countries—20 tours of Japan alone—on stages like Bowery Ballroom, The Fillmore (SF), Telluride Jazz Fest, Desert Daze, and Blue Note Tokyo. We’ve helped sell over 57,000 tickets and generated $1.1 million in gross box office receipts between 2018 and 2020. Opening for Khruangbin, Kikagaku Moyo, and Toro y Moi. Headlining our own sold-out rooms. Watching strangers become audiences, then become something closer.

Beyond the stage, there is another language music speaks—one that translates into film, into brand narratives, into something larger than itself. I have negotiated, contracted, and cleared sync & master use licensing deals for Google, Adidas, Urban Outfitters, and more—bringing in $400K+ in revenue and over 6M views.

To play music is to live inside a series of ephemeral moments—one song played at the right time, to the right people, in a place that exists for an hour and then never again in the same way. I have built a life inside those moments. Writing them. Performing them. Producing them. Selling them. Making sure they mean something before they disappear.