Follow the signs! NAMASTHAY — ALBUM 63
נעשה לנו חג — NA’ASE LANOU HAG
THE ART OF TURNING THE TABLES — WITHOUT TURNING AGAINST ANYONE
10 October 2026 | Namasthay × Lurch Productions
63 albums. One unexpected celebration. And a rather beautiful lesson in the art of turning apparent ridicule into something constructive.
What if the greatest victory is not defeating an opponent, but making the confrontation unnecessary?
This is the story behind Namasthay’s 63rd album.
And for those who have followed Screen Signals, Ajinomatrix, our adventures in the food industry, and the increasingly improbable parade of dinosaurs, there is rather more to celebrate here than another musical release.
There is a change of perspective.
A little media alchemy.
And something that, in my personal spiritual vocabulary, feels remarkably like a blessing.
But first, some numbers.
1. THE MUSIC STARTED MOVING BEFORE WE ANNOUNCED IT
On 10 October 2026, something rather encouraging appeared in my Bandcamp statistics.
156 plays over the preceding 30 days.
And on the final day of that period:
39 plays.
A new high point in the displayed activity.
Nothing remotely resembling a massive promotional campaign had taken place.
No advertising budget.
No carefully orchestrated release campaign.
No sponsored posts.
Not even an official announcement yet.
Just a handful of WhatsApp messages — fewer than twenty, by my count — and the music finding its way into people’s listening habits.
The statistics concern Namasthay’s catalogue as a whole, not exclusively album 63. Several tracks associated with the new release were already appearing among the most-played selections.
We cannot establish from these numbers exactly how many listeners arrived independently, or what caused the increase.
But the observation is encouraging:
Something was happening before we started making noise about it.
And after years of creating, releasing and sometimes wondering whether anybody was listening, that is a rather welcome sight.
Thank you.
Truly.
2. THE FOOD INDUSTRY — AND THE ART OF TURNING THE TABLES
Those familiar with my work know that Namasthay is not my only creative universe.
There is also Ajinomatrix.
For years, we have been developing technologies and methodologies around sensory intelligence, taste, smell, food innovation and the digital representation of human experience.
Our ambition has always been rather unusual.
Not merely to manufacture another food-tech tool.
But to change how the food industry understands the people it serves.
What do people actually experience when they taste something?
Why do they like it?
What changes when culture, context, memory or expectation enters the equation?
Can we represent those experiences digitally?
Can we predict them?
And can we use that knowledge to make better products — and perhaps better decisions?
These questions led us toward TasteTuner, JRF, MP6, FEELLLM, willULikeIT and an expanding family of experimental tools.
And lately, after a great deal of work, we’ve begun seeing these ideas come together in increasingly tangible workflows.
That is the professional victory I want to celebrate.
Not the defeat of the food industry.
Not a claim that the industry has already adopted our standards.
But the fact that we have managed to turn a rather improbable vision into working experiments that people can actually test, criticise and improve.
Coco’s first beta test was particularly instructive.
She understood the concept.
She also made it abundantly clear that the workflow was too complicated.
Excellent.
Because a product doesn’t become successful when its inventor understands it.
It begins becoming useful when somebody else can.
And from that wonderfully practical criticism came a surprising idea:
Why not make the experience into a game?
Enter CakeOsaurus.
🦖🎂
3. THEN CAME THE DINOSAUR
Readers of Screen Signals IV — The Dinosaur, the Sukkah & the Holiday already know the story.
An elevator.
A green dinosaur playing a drum.
An Israeli singer and her friends enjoying an improbable moment.
A holiday greeting.
And a soundtrack by Yigal Bashan:
בואי נעשה לנו חג
Bo’i Na’ase Lanu Chag.
Come, let’s make ourselves a holiday.
Initially, I experienced the imagery through the emotional vocabulary of my own ongoing artistic narrative.
For a moment, it felt uncomfortable.
Even ridiculous.
Then something shifted.
I listened to the music.
I remembered my Sukkah, already standing.
I remembered the CakeOsaurus concept that had emerged from our food-tech brainstorming.
And I started laughing.
Not at anybody.
At the extraordinary possibilities of the montage.
The dinosaur wasn’t necessarily saying anything about me.
The public Story wasn’t evidence of a private message.
But the image had become part of an artistic encounter.
And I was free to decide what to create from it.
So I made a holiday.
4. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DEFLATE A MEDIA CONFRONTATION?
This is perhaps the most important idea in the entire episode.
A provocative image — or an image we experience as provocative — can invite several responses.
We can become defensive.
We can attempt to explain ourselves.
We can retaliate.
We can spend days debating what somebody supposedly meant.
Or we can do something else.
We can remove the pressure from the situation.
Not by denying that something hurt.
Not by pretending we are above embarrassment.
But by changing the frame.
A dinosaur that initially appears humiliating can become the drummer at a celebration.
A joke that might seem to place somebody in an uncomfortable role can become a reminder that nobody owes us a performance.
An apparent confrontation can become a piece of art.
And a perceived loss of dignity can become an opportunity to demonstrate something far more interesting:
The ability to laugh without surrendering one’s dignity — or attacking somebody else’s.
I call this media deflation.
It is not a recognised scientific term I am claiming to have established.
It is my description of a creative technique:
Instead of amplifying the emotional pressure of an image, we transform its meaning through context, humour and artistic reinterpretation.
The image remains.
But its power to provoke diminishes.
Nobody needs to lose.
And suddenly there is room for everybody at the table.
That is a kind of victory I find considerably more satisfying than winning an argument.
5. THE REVERSAL — AND A LITTLE SELF-AWARENESS
There is also something I owe the story.
An acknowledgment.
Sometimes, in our enthusiasm, we place people inside roles they never agreed to play.
A princess.
A queen.
A symbolic figure.
A character in a narrative we find beautiful, meaningful or amusing.
And because the story feels affectionate to us, we may underestimate how differently it could be experienced by somebody else.
Then one day, we imagine ourselves placed in an equally uncomfortable position.
And suddenly we understand.
That doesn’t mean anybody deliberately staged such a reversal.
It means the experience offered me a useful perspective.
Affection does not create an obligation.
Admiration does not confer ownership.
And an artist’s freedom includes the freedom not to participate in somebody else’s interpretation.
So the lesson becomes remarkably simple.
No crowns required.
No assigned roles.
No obligation to answer.
And absolutely no need to interrogate the dinosaur.
😂
We can simply celebrate the music.
6. WHEN A VICTORY FEELS LIKE A BLESSING
Now comes the part that requires a little care.
Those who have followed my work know that I do not entirely separate creativity, spirituality and scientific curiosity.
I have often experienced moments of unusual correspondence between events, music, images and the projects occupying my attention.
Sometimes those moments feel profoundly meaningful.
Sometimes they feel like encouragement.
And sometimes, particularly after a difficult period, they feel like a blessing.
That is how I experience this moment.
After years of work on Ajinomatrix, we are seeing tangible technical progress.
After years of music, we have reached album 63.
After an emotionally complicated sequence of Screen Signals, the story has arrived at humour and celebration.
And the listening statistics have offered a small, unexpected encouragement.
Taken together, these developments feel generous.
I am grateful for them.
But gratitude does not require claiming that an algorithm was directed by a higher power, that a public figure was secretly communicating with me, or that a coincidence establishes supernatural intervention.
My intellectual home also includes the tradition of libre examen.
And I intend to remain faithful to it.
We can examine the chronology.
We can study the algorithms.
We can compare explanations.
We can acknowledge uncertainty.
And we can still be moved.
To me, that is not a contradiction.
It is a richer way of being human.
A blessing can be the name we give to our gratitude without pretending to know the mechanism behind every fortunate event.
7. FROM THE FOOD INDUSTRY TO FOOD FOR THE SOUL
Look again at the cover of album 63.
There is a rather imposing figure associated with the food industry.
A table overflowing with food.
A Sukkah.
A singer.
A green dinosaur.
CakeOsaurus.
A prehistoric croissant.
Music.
Technology.
And the golden light of a celebration that seems determined to accommodate absolutely everybody.
The visual joke is deliberate.
For years, Ajinomatrix has challenged conventional approaches to understanding food and sensory experience.
But the purpose was never to replace human beings with algorithms.
Quite the opposite.
The purpose is to return human experience to the centre of the process.
The food industry should serve people.
Technology should serve experience.
And innovation should ultimately make life more interesting, more accessible and more enjoyable.
So the album cover turns the tables.
The industry captain is no longer the sole protagonist.
The people around the table are.
Food becomes culture.
Culture becomes music.
Music becomes play.
And play becomes a possible meeting place between generations, disciplines and communities.
That’s where JRF, MP6 and even the improbable CakeOsaurus begin to make sense together.
Not as proof that the universe has secretly endorsed our business plan.
But as evidence that our creative work can generate new ideas when we allow different disciplines to meet.
And perhaps that is the most important Ajinomatrix victory of all:
We have not merely built tools for analysing experience. We are learning to design experiences worth sharing.
8. SEVEN TRACKS — SEVEN WAYS TO CELEBRATE
Album 63 is not a conventional holiday record.
Far from it.
It is an exuberant collection of reinterpretations, collaborations, AI-assisted musical experiments and atmospheric journeys.
The opening Oo Lalala, inspired by Kool & the Gang, announces the party.
Petit Pêcheur, inspired by Manon Lisa, brings a playful, lighter touch.
Same Old Sun, inspired by Ryan Harris, introduces a more contemplative warmth.
Then come two particularly enjoyable contributions involving Luc Dratwa’s AI-assisted musical work:
Machine en Fumée and Tout ça pour ça.
The latter title is almost too appropriate.
All that for this?
Well…
Yes.
All that for a celebration.
All that for a little perspective.
All that for the possibility of laughing together.
Then Aura Terra, featuring ShiveBound in a submix, opens a longer atmospheric passage.
And King of the Gypsies, featuring Balkan Gypsy material from Parallel FM, brings the record toward its adventurous conclusion.
Seven tracks.
As usually proposed.
Different musical origins.
Different energies.
One shared intention:
Make room for joy.
This is a Namasthay reinterpretation project, not an official collaboration with the original performers of the covered works. Their music is acknowledged with appreciation and respect.
9. THANK YOU — ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE HELPING
This is perhaps the most enjoyable part to write.
Thank you to Coco, whose beta-testing criticism helped us see what the JRF/MP6 experience still needed.
Thank you to Pia, whose suggestions helped populate our emerging universe of food games and improbable creatures.
Thank you to Luc Dratwa for the musical contributions and experiments that helped shape this release.
Thank you to everyone who has worked with us on Ajinomatrix, often long before the results became visible.
Thank you to the musicians whose work continues to inspire reinterpretation and discovery.
Thank you to the people who have listened, shared, questioned, challenged or simply smiled.
And thank you, in a broader artistic sense, to the unexpected encounters that gave Screen Signals its material.
Some of those encounters were uncomfortable.
Some were funny.
Some were beautiful.
And some only became beautiful after I stopped trying to decide what they were supposed to mean.
There is a lesson there.
Not everything that unsettles us is an attack.
Not everything that resembles an answer was intended as one.
And not everything that makes us laugh is ridicule.
Sometimes humour is the most graceful way to restore proportion.
Sometimes it gives everybody their dignity back.
And sometimes it produces an album.
10. THE NUMBERS, THE MUSIC AND THE NEXT CHAPTER
The Bandcamp figures are modest in absolute terms.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.
156 plays in thirty days is not a commercial breakthrough.
Nor does a single-day peak of 39 plays establish a lasting growth trend.
But those numbers matter to me because of their context.
They arrived with almost no deliberate promotion.
They arrived while new work was being released.
And they arrived at a moment when the artistic and technological strands of my life were beginning to connect in unexpectedly productive ways.
The right response is neither triumphalism nor false modesty.
It is gratitude, followed by more work.
We will continue developing Ajinomatrix.
We will continue improving the JRF/MP6 workflow.
We will continue exploring the possibilities of CakeOsaurus.
And, naturally, we will continue making music.
Because the most interesting part of reaching album 63 is not the number.
It is discovering that there are still new things to say.
New people to thank.
New ideas to explore.
And new reasons to celebrate.
THE ART OF WINNING WITHOUT AN OPPONENT
Perhaps this is the real conclusion of Screen Signals.
I began by wondering whether an image was making fun of me.
I ended by making an album cover in which the entire cast was invited to dinner.
Nobody was defeated.
Nobody was required to apologise.
Nobody had to admit to sending a message they may never have intended.
And nobody had to surrender their freedom.
The confrontation simply lost its necessity.
That is media deflation.
And if we can bring even a little of that spirit into the way we develop technology, communicate across cultures and work toward peace, perhaps this ridiculous dinosaur has contributed something worthwhile after all.
Not because it was sent to teach us a lesson.
But because we chose to learn one.
Occurrence is fact.
Chronology is testable.
Correspondence is observable.
Meaning is interpretation.
Intent requires evidence.
Creation is our choice.
And today, our choice is celebration.
To those who have followed the entire journey:
Thank you for staying curious.
Thank you for tolerating the occasional prehistoric detour.
And thank you for helping make this strange, beautiful creative adventure possible.
חג שמח — CHAG SAMEACH
נעשה לנו חג — LET’S MAKE OURSELVES A HOLIDAY!
With gratitude, humour, affection and the freedom to remain ourselves.
NAMASTHAY ♾️
Album 63 — Na’ase Lanou HagLurch Productions — October 2026
🎧 Listen to Album 63 on Bandcamp
Image: Official Na'ase Lanou Hag album cover (album #63) - Namasthay
Sometimes the most elegant answer is not another question.
It’s an invitation to celebrate.
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