Stories
We launched as a blog in August 2010. Two months later, Instagram was created.
We’ve made it this far: 11 years later it’s 2021 and we recently opened a brick-and-mortar shop while surpassing 10k followers on Instagram. But, nothing is permanent. We want to take this moment to encourage you join our email mailing list and follow us on Bandcamp. They’re the surest ways of keeping in touch with the latest AGS updates, at least in this digital era. If there’s anything we want to say about today’s outages across Instagram, Facebook, and all of its services, is that we’re grateful for all the connections we’ve made over the years, near and far, in-person...
Kalapana's 1974 debut: the record that forever changed Hawaii.
This record changed Hawaii forever. Fronted by songwriters Mackey Feary and Malani Bilyeu, with guitarist DJ Pratt (who recently passed away... RIP) and keyboardist Kirk Thompson (of Lemuria legend), their debut shaped the sound of a contemporary Hawaii in the 1970s, a sound that is still embedded in our islands.To this day, the music of Kalapana defies categorization — is it jazz? rock? pop? R&B? — the band fills a space uniquely its own. Kalapana has always been difficult to define, especially their first album which remains the pinnacle of modern music from Hawaii. The band was so in tune...
A look at our on-the-ground presence in Honolulu over the years
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...
Mahalo Monday returns to Venice Beach on October 11th 2021
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...
The beginnings of a new release (and notes on friendships)
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...