Stories — Mixes

We spent some time in Los Angeles and Brooklyn last month with the opportunity to drop into two outstanding online radio stations, NTS and The Lot. Both broadcasts are available for playback below (and on each station's respective Mixcloud). The NTS show was 100% music from Hawaii or connected to the islands — that Lani Groves track comes from an LP that was recorded in LA and Maui, and the Manila Machine band was a Filipino group that performed often in Hawaii, despite their LP not being recorded in Hawaii. It's always fun to share some island tunes I've been...

Heavy mellow: two words that can describe so much of the music that's created in Hawaii. This is what inspired us in our latest mix, the relaxed sounds of our islands that move us deeply. On June 10th, 2016, clothing company Claymore Minds invited Aloha Got Soul to spin records for the launch party of their "Heavy Mellow" T-shirt series, hosted at About The Goods in Honolulu. We jumped at the opportunity, embracing the theme to curate a unique selection that showcases the seriously sublime soundscape of Hawaii's musical palette: new age and folk from the 1980s; psych from the...

When paired with photos from the evening, DJ Notoya's recording transports the listener to Soul Time In Hawaii. Together they recreate an authentic, nostalgic experience of what this monthly all-vinyl event in Honolulu is like. Even though the sound quality is far from perfect, it perfectly captures more than a mix ever could.

Some things take time, something we don't always have enough of. I first connected with Rob Butler, the man behind Be With Records, in October 2014. He sent me a friendly email and mentioned plans to visit Hawaii in mid-2015. Rob and I both do the same kind of thing: run a record label that focuses on reissuing out-of-print classics and obscure deserving-to-be-classics. Except Rob's way out in London (or, from his perspective, I'm way out here in Honolulu), so the only way we could meet in person is to wait until he makes a trip to Hawaii or I...

On March 26, 2015, Aloha Got Soul celebrated the one-year anniversary of Soul Time In Hawaii, our monthly all-vinyl party right here in Honolulu. To celebrate, we played 100% Hawaiian vinyl all night: 8 hours straight. Initially, the Soul Time party was a one-off event in two cities to promote a tee/mixtape collab I did with a new London apparel company called Weekends West. We held it in Honolulu and London. The events were a success, so we turned Soul Time into a monthly gig on both sides of the globe. (We recently had the opportunity to expand to the...