Beyond the Dream: Budakid on the Personal Journey Behind His Debut Album

Dreams Stretched Beyond is more than just Budakid’s long-awaited debut album. 

The long player, released through his own Flores label, captures a deeply personal period for the Berlin-based Dutch-Indonesian producer, DJ, singer and multi-instrumentalist, one shaped by isolation in the Austrian Alps, creative uncertainty, experimentation and an increasing desire to preserve something unmistakably human within electronic music.

Strangely, after years of trying to make an album, Dreams Stretched Beyond only materialised when Budakid stopped deliberately attempting to write one. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve tried several times to intentionally write an album, but none of these processes succeeded in a full LP,” he explains. “I felt most of the time a bit afraid and too insecure, I also had many doubts about what it could be.”

This time, there was no grand plan, “This album came together along the way instead of being intentionally an album,” he says. “My original idea was to make a triptych EP of six conceptually connected tracks.”

As the music developed, however, Budakid began recognising a deeper relationship between the tracks and the experiences shaping them, “The coherence between these tracks and the overall process started to grow more on to me,” he says. “It started to become more of a personal journey, a process that pulled me into new directions. Which resulted in Dreams Stretched Beyond.”

Central to that journey was a dramatic change of surroundings. Budakid spent close to two years in Tyrol, immersed in the Alpine landscape and removed from the pace of city life. “This period of time allowed me to dive more deep into my own microcosmos,” he says. “It felt sometimes like a philosophical break. The environment made me feel small but a hundred percent alive, in the moment.”

Long hikes through the mountains brought moments of almost surreal clarity. “Sometimes while I was hiking I thought: ‘Am I dreaming? Is this real?’ I did feel a certain calmness in myself that I didn’t experience before.”

More importantly, the isolation created space to interrogate his own instincts without the constant presence of outside influences. “Detached from big city things, unconscious distortions and cultural trends, I had to reflect on things myself, alone, with all the tools and knowledge I’ve learned over the last 30-plus years,” he explains. “No distractions, no influences and no judgements. It felt almost like a two-year creative retreat.”

That environment found its way directly into the music. For example, album opener Igls introduces the record with a sweeping, cinematic quality, something rooted in Budakid’s longstanding relationship between sound and imagery. “I graduated as a graphic designer,” he explains. “To combine visuals and sound was something that came naturally to me. Back in the day, I tried to translate videos or pictures into soundtracks.”

That instinct remains embedded in how he composes. “Music for me sometimes has this ‘fading away’ factor, which fascinates me. When this feeling boils up it mostly comes together with an imaginary visual scenery.”

If the finished album feels cohesive, its creation was far from linear. Budakid describes creativity as something that resists being controlled. “Controlling artistic creativity can sometimes be impossible for me,” he says. “It comes like the sea, it’s like ebb and flow.”

Rather than forcing inspiration, he has learned the importance of moving away from music entirely. “Sometimes it works like a motivation when I step away and dive into other things,” he says, whether that means technical production tasks, cleaning his studio or “even something like a deep dive into how to make kimchi. The contradiction is, when I do something totally different, musical ideas boil up again.”

Those pauses also allow him to hear unfinished material differently. “Whenever I take a break, it gives me sometimes a rational and different perspective on the ideas I’ve got laying on the table,” he says. “I think distance is as important as focus.”

That distance is particularly valuable for a producer capable of spending months, sometimes years, refining a track. “It’s extremely difficult,” he admits of knowing when something is finished. “Some tracks or processes really take months if not years. For example, Endless was one of those tracks that seemed… endless. It lay on the shelf for over two years.”

Budakid’s musical foundations predate electronic production. A drummer from childhood, he became curious about keyboards and piano by the age of 12. That combination of rhythm, melody and harmony continues to underpin his work. “My writing process hasn’t really changed,” he says. “I usually start a new song with a beat, a jam on the piano or a coincidence that happens when I’m experimenting. Each start gives me a different result. Some tracks evolve to be more atmospheric, some more rhythmic and some a little more experimental. My mood and emotional state are important factors.”

Among all the instruments and technology used on Dreams Stretched Beyond, however, Budakid identifies one simple piece of equipment as perhaps the most transformative, “The microphone.” For the first time, his own dreamy vocals feature prominently across the album, adding another deeply personal dimension to his music. “I never used to trust myself singing,” he admits.

The decision to embrace his voice was partly prompted by anxiety surrounding the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. “I suffered a light depression caused by the rapid approach of AI,” he says. “I was looking for something I could add to my musical stories, something more human.” His answer was not technical perfection, but vulnerability. “I don’t see myself as an educated or talented singer, but the beauty of the imperfections did transfer the message in the way I wanted to express myself.”

That embrace of imperfection became fundamental to the wider sound of the album. “Music is human to me, it also needs its artifacts,” he says. “Imperfections are something that really excite and sometimes even inspire me. It sometimes really brings character and soul to a track or production.”

Rather than attempting to compete with increasingly flawless technology, Budakid found himself deliberately moving in another direction. “The introduction of AI motivated me even more to embrace these imperfections,” he says. “Everything can be prompted nowadays in a perfect shaped thing, but the imperfections is something that makes us human.”

Two tracks in particular helped transform what had begun as an EP project into a full album. “I think Endless and Tannenheim were the tracks that moved me towards the full body LP,” he says. “These two journeys contain both an important story to me.”

Sonically, the tracks occupy markedly different territories. Endless is spacious and emotive, built around warm chords, atmospheric synths and Budakid’s soft vocal, while Tannenheim takes the record towards a harder, more industrial landscape. Yet their connection lies beneath those stylistic differences. “Even when they’re style-wise a bit different to each other, they were created within the same mindset and timeframe,” he explains. “Together they were turning into the fundament of it all.”

Rather than following a predetermined sonic blueprint, the album was unified by something less tangible. “In general, I didn’t really have a direction in sound,” Budakid says. “It was more of an overall philosophy that made me create.”

Beneath all of the album’s musical experimentation lies an even more personal thread. Budakid has long wrestled with self-doubt, and completing his debut album has not magically removed it. “It hasn’t improved my self-doubt,” he admits, “but it has helped me understand certain personal struggles, motivations and philosophies.”

Music has always been something deeply autobiographical for Budakid. “My music is my personal diary,” he says. With Dreams Stretched Beyond, that diary has become more exposed than ever. Through his voice, lyrics and the emotional experiences embedded within the tracks, he has allowed listeners further into his internal world. “Opening my thoughts and dreams up to the world feels like going naked, like I have nowhere to hide,” he says. “So, I’ve stretched these dreams beyond my own comfort zone. Hence the title of this LP, Dreams Stretched Beyond.”

What began as six connected tracks evolved through Alpine isolation, creative pauses, visual memories, technological anxieties and an embrace of imperfection into his most personal statement yet. Rather than providing closure, completing it has opened another door. “It’s given confidence with who I am as an artist,” Budakid says. “It’s opened up a new world of possibilities.” 

The daunting prospect of making a first album is now behind him, leaving a sense of creative freedom. “Writing your first album is daunting,” he says. “Now I have even more freedom to think wider and bigger.” For an album rooted in pushing ideas, dreams and vulnerabilities beyond familiar boundaries, that feels like an appropriate place to look forward. “I can’t wait to dive in the studio again,” he says.

Budakid – Dreams Stretched Beyond is out now on his Flores label. Grab it on Beatport HERE.

Read the full interview with Budakid on The Night Bazaar HERE.