Stories — Releases

Procured from two reels belonging to Mike Kahikina, these songs were part of the sessions that Kahikina and his band Ka‘ala recorded some 40+ years ago. In 1983, two of the songs here released on Protea Records as a 7-inch single: "Ocean Rider" and "Show Me". When we restored the tapes with the help of audio engineer Jessica Thompson, we found three different versions of "Ocean Rider". There were also two versions of "I Am A Native", both of which could easily serve as long-lost anthems, speaking just as powerfully today as they did when Kahikina and Ka‘ala first committed...

Few if any copies of The New World, Volume 1 have surfaced since I first became aware of the LP thanks to Oliver Seguin. Before the label took shape in 2015, I'd seen (heard, rather) Oliver play the cuts "Soul Catchers" and "Such A Lovely Garden" only a handful of times (they're not necessarily DJ-friendly tracks, but rather for deeper listening sessions, so it wasn't often that he'd bring his copy to a gig).  Looking through my notes and old emails, I had first reached out to one of the members of East Of Midnight, Liz Hahn (formerly Haberman), in 2014 —...

It feels as if it's been quite some time since we released a new music project. After reissuing two timelss albums from Kalapana's early days, followed by a collaboration with the legendary Brother Noland, we're decidedly taking a break from the spotlight-filled stage of classic local music to focus on our roots: bringing attention to lesser known, often under-represented artists in these islands.  Max High is a multi-instrumentalist of Japanese-Filipino-French descent, currently living and working on Oahu. He moved to the islands in 2021, and has since called Honolulu his home. Each year since the pandemic, Max has used his ongoing Recordings series as a process of...

At the heart of what we do at Aloha Got Soul is selecting: the careful choosing of music as timeless as the vinyl record. This act of curation informs every release on our label. It also extends to our work as DJs, hosting radio shows, creating playlists, and running a brick-and-mortar record shop. What people hear when they look to us for music is the result of a sometimes painstaking, always intentional process of selecting. Kalapana’s catalog is vast. For us (and many others), Kalapana is the crème de la crème of local music. Their catalog, whilst expansive across decades,...

Sometime in early 2021, Kyoto-based musician and producer HALFBY reached out with a new track he'd been working on, entitled "Beach Baby Be Mine". To our surprise, the vocalist was Richard Natto and the song a new, original composition with music by Halfby and lyrics by Natto. We listened over and over to that demo version and fell. in. love. It was hard not to get the catchy riff and verses out of our heads! Then, Halfby asked if Roger would be willing to make a remix. Sure, why not? It's been years since he'd made any music of his own, but the opportunity was...