Two years ago, we introduced a 12-part series of field recordings from Hawai‘i entitled Aloha ‘Āina. These soundscapes, captured in stereo throughout the Hawaiian Islands, are engineer Kit Ebersbach's ode to the archipelago.
Today we're finally releasing the final two installments in the series, volumes 11 and 12.
When we announced the first volume of the series on March 13 2020, the release was received with great enthusiasm from a global audience of listeners most of whom were stuck indoors at the outset of a years-long global pandemic. The recordings, culled from the deep archives of engineer and keyboardist Kit Ebersbach, whose hard drives run vast and deep with captured sounds from across the islands going back years, if not decades.
In the early wake of the series' impact on listeners worldwide, London-based music journalist Anton Spice took note, the project speaking directly to his then-current situation: Spice, in the midst of lockdown, found himself stuck on the Isle of Muck, a tiny island located in northern Ireland. With little else to do, Spice spent his time recording soundscapes across the isle, eventually launching a project, Echo Location, and tapping musicians from around the world to remix/reinterpret his Muck field recordings. Before the launch of Echo Location, Spice reached out to us for an interview with Kit about Aloha ‘Āina, a piece that eventually became a feature-length career retrospective for the Honolulu-based keyboardist, who first moved to the Hawaiian islands in the 1960s from the East Coast.
Since the inaugural release in March 2020, we've added nine more releases to the series with the intention of finishing up at 12 volumes. Why did it take three years to complete the series? Well, for one: we opened a brick-and-mortar vinyl record shop in Honolulu in the summer of 2021, which has since kept us busy and, in turn, requiring effort and attention that would've been reserved for the label side of Aloha Got Soul. But now, just as spring 2023 rounds the corner from a cold and rainy winter season, we've found our footing once again for the label's output. (Expect to see/hear more Kit Ebersbach releases throughout this month of March.)
We hope these final two volumes in our field recordings series transport you somewhere special, whether it's the feeling of home or an escape to distant Pacific paradise.