Stories

Earlier this summer, we opened AGS Honolulu after realizing it was time to finally get an office, and then discovering the perfect spot on King Street and McCully (big shoutout to Dean Song of MŌNO Hawaii for the support!). We quickly realized we could work here and maintain a small retail space at the same time. We opened the doors in June 2021. Photo by Mark Kushimi from a few weeks ago. Back in 2017, we popped up at the Hawaii Record Fair, hosted by Hungry Ear Records. The label had a few solid releases under its belt by then, including a...

We’re super stoked to announce that Vinyl Don is returning to the legendary Venice Beach venue, Townhouse, for the continuation of his 5-year-strong weekly party, #MahaloMonday. It’s how we first met Vinyl Don — for his first gigs in 2016, he would go digging for Hawaii wax at Amoeba Records and eventually stumbled upon our Aloha Got Soul compilation with Strut Records. Ever since that fateful connection, we’ve been counting on Don to help us perpetuate the sonic diversity of these Hawaiian Islands throughout the world — whether it’s at home in Los Angeles, overseas in Tokyo, and right here...

Sometime in 2020, @djvinyldon got in touch with a man named Mitch Padeken, the bassist for a local group called Moondance. It was a cold call (like many of our efforts are when searching for artists), and a pleasant surprise for Mitch. Few people have reached out to him in decades about their back-in-the-day band from North Shore, Oahu. After making initial connection (Don currently lives in Los Angeles), me (@rogerbong) and #OliverSeguin drove to Waimea to meet Mitch in person. He invited us to hang out on his lanai out back, overlooked the open ocean just east of Waimea...

When recreating album artwork for reissue, we prefer to start from scratch, with Roger Bong rebuilding the jacket piece by piece by relying on a combination of photographing the original LP, touching up the images in Photoshop, and rebuilding the text and colors with InDesign. (Check out our Catching A Wave LP for a finished example!). In our experience, scanning original LPs rarely yields satisfactory results for modern day reproduction. Coincidentally, when tasked with selecting the jacket’s green, orange and blue colors, Leimomi Bong discovered the solution in Pantone’s most recent Fashion Color Trend Reports for New York and London Autumn/Winter...

It’s official: our 70th release is the vinyl reissue of Kalapana. Much like Mackey Feary Band’s debut, Kalapana’s first record (eponymously titled Kalapana and sometimes referred to as Kalapana I) has always left an indelible impression on us. From start to finish, this LP is a masterpiece. Kalapana’s breakout debut in 1975 forever shaped the sound of Hawaii. Comprised of four founding members — Mackey Feary, Malani Bilyeu, David John Pratt, Kirk Thompson — the band led the way for a new, contemporary sound of Hawaii with the highest caliber of songwriting. Tunes like “Nightbird”, “The Hurt”, and “Naturally” confirmed Kalapana’s place as legends in...