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KMKN143
Fresh Listen - Various Artists, From These Shores: Otherworldly Music and Far-Out Sounds from Hawai‘i (Aloha Got Soul, 2019)
(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not-so-recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)
As Aloha Got Soul so meticulously documented in its first Hawai‘i-based song sampler, Aloha Got Soul - Soul, AOR & Disco in Hawai‘i, 1979-1985, the music scene within this particular archipelago has been far from homogenous, despite what the playlists of some contemporary radio stations would have one believe. But aside from a couple artists whose genre-bending synthesis inspired in the listener an island-style altered-consciousness (Nohelani Cypriano’s “O’ Kailua” and Brother Noland’s “Kawaihae,”) the sometimes folk-inflected soul and disco of the original compilation aspired to the values of the popular radio music of its day: love songs, mostly, musically sophisticated and carefully produced, all the raw bits cooked to a medium well-done.
Released just last year, From These Shores: Otherworldly Music and Far-Out Sounds from Hawai‘i is the dark-magic B-side to Aloha Got Soul’s sunny A-side. An air of mystery surrounded the record when I first removed it from its sleeve--unlike its predecessor, the album lacked the exhaustively researched liner notes by label founder Roger Bong (though a rundown of the songs and artists can be found on the label’s website). Initially, the origins of this music and the artists who recorded it were completely beyond me, and with no backstory printed on the record sleeve, these disparate tunes (described by Roger as “softly-psychedelic cosmic folk and psych”) are catalysts for the listeners imagination, establishing a timeless living space, seconds in a moment no longer following one another linearly but absorbed into a single present. Everything on From These Shores sounds as though it could have been recorded 50 years ago, or just the other day in someone’s bedroom.
As it turns out, the time period the album covers is roughly parallel to the first compilation. Though parallel in time, the aesthetics of these two releases never quite intersect. Whereas the exacting musical capabilities of Aloha Got Soul artists Mike Lundy, or Aura, or Nova, or Greenwood seem developed for popular consumption, representative artists on From These Shores must have written and recorded exclusively under the spell of febrile imagination and obsession. These are determined songs that exist confidently unto themselves, less the result of trying to capture a scene or a genre than out of a basic joy of music making. In other words, though both Aloha Got Soul and From These Shores emerged in the rich musical wash of Seventies and Eighties Hawai‘i, the latter record must have originated in a weirder, more personal place. Each song is drastically different from the other, though all interact electrically toward composition of the whole. What is classified as “psychedelic” is often and overused misnomer for what is sonically bent, in a pleasing way, or lyrically oblique, or simply, in comparison with the mainstream, plain weird. The weirdos, as I’ve said before, are for me.
The synth-conjured waves of Eddie Suzuki’s “High Tide” (echoed in later tracks by Mofoya and Harry Sonoda) kick off From These Shores with a light, easy- going melody evocative of Bobby Womack’s “Breezin,’” The electronic keyboard lick as distinctive as what George Benson or Gabor Szabo milked from their electric guitars. The melody is so natural that the synthesizer seems almost to sing; unfortunately, all this careless love is undercut by a busier-than-it-needs-to-be bassline. (It must have been recorded by a guitar player, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Eddie Suzuki himself). Even though the bass is a bit overextended, it gives the record less-polished, homespun, one-man auteur quality.
The lyrics of Richard Reb’ll’s “Reb’ll Message,” as well as the turgidity in which they are intoned, casts the song as a near-parody, a Dr. Demento-style dig at the silliness inherent in love songs, especially those that aim at a hippie-dippie type of universality. In his notes about the album, Roger Bong reveals that Reb’ll’s vocals were a last minute act of desperation--having failed to secure another singer to serve as vessel for his gobbledy gook, Reb’ll lay down the voice track himself, magnifying his vocal limitations in the process. (Though I fail to grasp how any singer could have shaped a memorable melody around his words). At the very least, Reb’ll makes clear that the “love is blind” metaphors are far past their date of expiration.
Fortunately, Roger revives Reb’ll’s eccentric and exciting arrangement as the instrumental “Reb’ll Echo” in a later track: an Ennio Morricone acid jam, equal parts Bar-Kays, “Lady Jane” -era Rolling Stones, and Japanese garage rock.
Agitprop, no matter how artfully conveyed, is still agitprop: a fading snapshot of passing political thought. When does agitprop elevate to the level of Art? When Burgess and Brooks sing “No man, no / it doesn’t have to be / the word can be made / nuclear free” on “Revelation,” they successfully make the case that agitprop is, indeed, not Art. Even John Lennon made serious missteps when he channeled his songwriting into sloganeering.
As a warning about the weaponization of nuclear energy leading to a Biblical Apocalypse, “Revelation” undermines its own message in terms of the prophecy it references. According to the final book of the Bible, Revelation has already been foretold, and whether by nuclear bombs or the collapse of the the ecosystem, it will come. Burgess and Brooks, in holier-than-thou mode, may appeal to the Lord, but they are under the misapprehension that any kind of late-day Enlightenment will prevent the earthly horrors of the end times. The robotic and passionless execution of the song, despite its interesting chord changes, doesn’t do the message any favors.
The sound of waves carries forward from Eddie Suzuki’s “High Tide” to Mofoya’s “Magic Sands” and Harry Sonoda’s “Waves,” each track capturing a distinct psychic rendering of this godly natural phenomenon in contrast to the other. Whereas Mofoya’s gentle instrumental evokes sunlight warm upon the eyelids of a prostrate at the edge of a whispering tide, “Waves,” an impressionistic, electronic mini-symphony, powerfully proposes that the rolling majesty of the ocean is beyond the logic of human imagination. As indifferently destructive as they are soothing to the ear and spirit, waves will push forward until the end of time.
Whereas “Soul Catcher,” by the intriguingly named Baha’i group East of Midnight, suggests that a supreme and irrational consciousness may reveal itself in a humble gospel-folk song. Whether East of Midnight are successful in summoning a higher power through “Soul Catcher” is up for debate, but the group, who sing and play with the purity of talent show contenders at the local church, indeed conjure a deep sense of mystery in their haunting performance. Their agenda seems not to proselytize, but only to sing themselves closer to an inexpressible feeling.
There is little to say about “Kaimu Sun” except that it is too self-consciously precious, leaning hard into New Age signifiers in an attempt to manufacture tranquility. “Say You’ll Be With Me” is folk-rock of the the variety perfected by other other Hawai‘i bands, (Country Comfort, for one), but comes across as far less compelling.
No album is programmed perfectly, though each song reveals its value in relation to the others. In the context of compilation records, the role of lesser or middling tracks is to fuel the excellence of stronger pieces, so they achieve a critical mass in the ears of the listener. One of the stand-out tracks of From These Shores is “Righteous Morning,” beginning as an organ-drenched, Doors-ish pop-waltz then, via a series of time signature changes, manifesting into a muddy recreation of of the best of Sixties garage rock, the electric instruments all stacked on top of one another for maximum impact. Like a somewhat tranquilized Felix Cavaliere, Graham Broad’s vocals grow increasingly desperate over the course of the extended coda until the sun reveals that enlightenment exists in a form more elevated than this mortal coil.
A few weeks ago, while helping a friend move furniture while he was changing apartments, we got into a brief conversation about why it would be unwise to ever leave Hawai‘i, even though everything is more expensive, the traffic is an overarching nightmare that transcends time distinctions, and our presence no doubt exploits the disenfranchisement of the Native people from their island. Living here is complicated, and requires an awareness of one’s role in a defined ecosystem of peoples and practices. “In Hawai‘i” is an example of the “Hawai’i no ka oi” that many of us feel while trying to absorb the complexity; there is no place better, but we must now our place.
Because of its calculated accessibility, and aspirations toward light-weight C & K material, Lyle K’ang’s “How Many Times” is a puzzling choice for inclusion on From These Shores. It efficiently functions as a meaningless facsimile of a song that one would expect to hear on Seventies AM radio: “You got to be movin’ because you’re movin’ on / maybe you love me / and that’s the truth.”
Much of local and Native culture in Hawai‘i is commodified by outside (also inside) interests, packaged to appeal to consumers with a taste for the “exotic.” From These Shores is a kind of corrective to that cynicism--these are examples, for the most part, of art-in-sound, the motive behind each song’s genesis a joy of making a music completely immersed in Hawai‘i, but also floating above it, like an offhand inspiration.
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Fresh Listen - Various Artists, Aloha Got Soul: Soul, AOR & Disco in Hawaii 1979-1985 (Strut Records, 2016)
(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not-so-recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)
Reissue compilations, the songs of which were once buried in grooves of narrowly distributed 45′s, or the Side Two’s of otherwise unremarkable LP’s, have flourished in recent times. Once hoarded and gate-kept by the most fervent of crate diggers, these rare treasures–tunes that manifest an inexplicable magic that weaves into the ear and takes root in the heart–have never been more accessible to the average music consumer; owing to, presumably, the cheapness of the material to reproduce and repackage, the flickering resurrection of a vinyl industry in which assiduous repackaging is highly valued, and the proliferation and easy transmission of digitized sonic content through an Internet that has made specialist niche-managers out of even the most casual of fans. The traditional platforms of radio and music television to curate a country’s tastes in popular music don’t exist as meaningfully as they did in the past, and now the seeker, rabid as they come, can spelunk their way down a million rabbit holes on the Web to, at least temporarily, satiate an undying hunger, or simply catch a thrill. Along with Light in the Attic’s Si Para Usted: Funky Beats from Revolutionary Cuba and Analog Africa’s African Scream Contest: Raw and Psychedelic Sounds from Benin and Togo 70′s, there is for all of us compilation hunters Hawai’i label Aloha Got Soul’s Aloha Got Soul: Soul, AOR & Disco 1979-1985. Like sister reissues, Aloha Got Soul is not geared toward capturing in totality the predominant musical culture of the place it represents–specifically, the popular music of the place and period. Just as the majority of songs in heavy rotation in Cuba during the Revolutionary period wouldn’t necessarily have been characterized as “funky,” and the Seventies Togo and Benin soundscape wasn’t overwhelmingly defined by amped-up singers flailing their vocal chords against an insufficient sound system, Hawai‘i’s music scene of the late Seventies/early Eighties was, aside from the contemporaneous recordings of Hawaiian songs in ‘olelo Hawai‘i, mostly boring, soft love ballads carrying through neutered emotions. Which is why Aloha Got Soul is so exciting as a cross-section of the musical output of players and songwriters who never rose to the level of audience awareness of Kalapana, or Olomana, or Sunday Manoa (though Aura may have come close, and Noelani Cypriano has always existed on the periphery of Hawai‘i’s popular consciousness). Aloha Got Soul exposes the benighted listener to not only the technical mastery, but also the giddy bouyant strangeness, that percolated in sweaty rehearsal spaces and in recording studios where the air was composed of moist endorphins and smoke that hung static, because the fans had to be turned off for each take. Each song on the record tells a story about Hawai‘i and the the aesthetic preoccupations of the bands featured–from Kalapana-style jazz-rock ambitions to mathematical funk arrangements, from Windward psychedelia to stoner surf-soul to gentle coastal balladry. Propelled by acoustic guitar chords, “Countryside Beauty” exudes a joyful innocence, a tendency to celebrate things as they are instead of longing in vain that they would be different. Offhandedly, as if not to degrade the miracle of awareness and its saturation in the loveliness of the landscape of Hawai‘i, the band laments the manner in which commercialized civilization has remade the space it has overrun. But the fleeting acknowledgement doesn’t supersede the relishing of the temporal appreciation of of a changing (and fading) natural environment. Aura, who also have a full-length release from the Aloha Got Soul label, would have been a freak happenstance in any music scene, Eighties Hawai‘i or otherwise. Uncommonly tight, with a confident female lead singer, “Yesterday’s Love” is exemplary of their overall style–angular, yet consciously funky and melodic. It sounds as if teeny-bopper soul were being covered by hoary aged jazzmen. Despite the admirable ability on their instruments, Aura reserves their soloing for the end of the track, during the fadeout, for a moment relinquishing the rigid construction of the song for some loose, good-natured jamming. Minimal synths and a nice falsetto bride distinguish “Your Light” from “Countryside Beauty,” in which the upbeat vitality of Kalapana is married to the soulful yearnings of Cecilio and Kapono. “Get that Happy Feeling” by Lemuria is an energized instrumental (mostly) that morphs into a call to action–like Pharell’s ubiquitous hit “Happy,” it grows grating because it’s so universally irresistible, like the greatest TV theme songs, or the interstitial canned recordings radio stations play as legal ID’s, or in between the real tracks. Hatred for music is a curious feeling. Maybe it’s better characterized as irritation, in that the negative feeling engendered by a particular song lasts only for the the brief span of time the song plays. But the tragic tendency of a hated song to propagate in the memory, and to fill in the dead spaces of consciousness (as opposed to say great works like In a Silent Way or A Love Supreme) with its odious humping like some fat blind worm can sometimes escalate a passing annoyance to seething hatred. There is great hate in my heart for Roy and Roe’s “Just Don’t Come Back.” I hate the way the song is put together, I hate the way Roy (or Roe) sings the vocal in a smarmy, self-assured drawl, I hate the dumb lyrics (”I walk all my lovers home, but they just don’t come back” sounds like he’s just murdered them in the darkness and thrown their corpses in a stream), I hate the fact that otherwise talented musicians wasted their time, talent, and spiritual energy on such a drag of a tune, artificial, cynical, and bereft of joy. “Just Don’t Come Back” is a completely misguided piece of work, which might have been forgiven if it wasn’t also so craven and calculating. Hawaii’s “Lady of My Heart” is more MOR than AOR–sadly, it’s either a predecessor of the bland mediocrity that was to overtake contemporary pop music in Hawai‘i, or just another example of it. Hal Bradbury’s “Call Me” and Nova’s “Feel Like Getting Down” are slow simmering, somewhat tepid, funk jams, rising and dipping tunes that fill the air like smoke from a traveling joint, obscuring the red light of the stereo. As much as I wanted to cheerlead Mike Lundy’s “Love One Another” for its sonic clarity, it’s somewhat deadened by its mechanics, more an algorithmic approximation of a kind of radio-friendly, blue-eyed soul. Nohelani Cypriano paints the stand out track of Aloha Got Soul with an Impressionist brush. “O’Kailua” is a lysergic Hawaiian fantasia, pedal steel guitars spraying colors as effectively as Stratocasters or organ washes. Cypriano imagines Kailua as the sprawling concrete behemoth that has insinuated itself through much of Oahu. Perhaps the song was only a Technicolor, spatially distorted vision of its time, but Kailua has fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Cypriano, a town choked with tourists and oddly uniform strip malls with the latest foods and consumer goods. Brother Noland’s exuberant weirdness powers “Kawaihae,” a musically adventurous pop song that straddles Hawaiian contemporary and the songs of the Moody Blues. “Kona Winds” by Marvin Franklin with Kimo and the Guys evokes sunset rays penetrating a fat wall of water, a quick ride and easy submergence. And Steve and Teresa’s “Kaho‘olawe Song” is the equivalent of a smooth canoe glide, the shore distant but you know you have enough juice in the arm muscles to get back. Essentially, Aloha Got Soul soundtracks a state of being in Hawai‘i, its songs expanding, growing in power, on salty sea breezes under the canopies of banyan trees and atop warm sands of cigarette butts and microplastics. Allow your eyes to take in Hawai‘i of the now with Aloha Got Soul rolling over your ears. Time will converge in a resurfacing of the endless vibes of music past.
alohagotsoul We met Dale Senaga for lunch on Friday and surprised him with a 7” he hadn’t seen in decades: Far East Co., the band he had during his teenage years — and a precursor to Liz Damon’s Orient Express. Their first gig was at The World of Suzie Wong on 1877 Kalakaua Ave — later the Wave Waikiki, which closed its doors in 2006, its former location now home to a 35-story luxury condominium.
We mostly talked about Aiko, though, and I realized that the four year anniversary of her passing will arrive next Sunday. (When we first reached out to Dale for licensing in 2014, we had no idea Aiko had died one week prior.)
Mahalo Dale for the stories, music, and hospitality.
alohagotsoul In 1965, Linda Green & The Tempos won first place in K-POI’s Blast Off contest, a rock’n’roll competition between high school bands throughout O’ahu. 💫 Groups known and unknown — like The Impressions, The Infashions, The Starliners, The Speidels — all gave their best shot. But it was Linda, guitarist Fred Kobashikawa, and the rest of The Tempos who took home the grand prize: $1500, swanky new outfits, and a recording contract for Reprise. They chose to record Fred’s original tune, “Bossa Nova Love”, for the now hard-to-find 45. 🎶✨ Listen to an interview with Linda and Fred on our SoundCloud.
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