On March 20, 2025 Gahlord Dewald and I spent a very pleasant afternoon in Mānoa evaluating the condition of his 4-track cassette recorders. During the process — using a handful of his analog synth modules — we recorded an 18-minute long, four-part drone. He shared the digitized stems with me that evening and, while noodling over them on my guitar, I thought — it would be fun to see what some of our friends would do with this… So we shared it with Jessica Ackerley, Max High, Jonny Lam, Navid Najafi and T.J. Keanu Tario. The result is the incredible variety of creative ideation on this album — with the original drone running through every track.

None of the artists involved heard each other’s work during the course of production, so the resulting album was a surprise to everyone involved. A bit like variations on a theme, a bit like exquisite corpse.

On Side One the music ranges from Jonny's psychedelic-ambient steel guitar exploration, to Max's shimmering, flute-driven meditation with Floteson, and ends with Navid's minimalist, hip-hop inflected ode to a tree planted by Queen Lili'uokalani. 

Side Two opens with a floating neo-soul chordal figure by Floteson, and a guitar improvisation for his late, jazz-trumpeter father. The drone continues into T.J.'s classically influenced reverie for solo piano (recorded on the gorgeous Yamaha grand at Island Sound Studios by the legendary Gaylord Holomalia). The album closes with Jessica Ackerley eschewing her guitar for the open space of field recordings and subtle sonic manipulations of the drone itself.

Gahlord created a number of pieces he describes as etudes, using command-line tools to randomly concatenate different length segments of the drones, mimicking old school tape processes. These serve as interstitial bridges between the tracks — on the cassette, they turn each side into one seamless experience (the digital version plays as discrete tracks).

It seemed only appropriate to honor the origin of the project by releasing a limited number of cassette tapes.

We are also making stems of the drone — straight from the original cassette! — available for free via digital download here. Make something weird and beautiful!

Side One
Jonny Lam: Is That a Caterpillar?  8:01
Max High: Magnificent Rain Tree (w/ Floteson)  3:11
Navid Najafi: In the Shade of the Queen's Magnolia × Alba  8:11
Mixed by Gahlord Dewald 

Side Two
Floteson: Tidelines  4:11
TJ Keanu Tario: Hulali  8:34
Recorded Gaylord Holomalia, Mixed by Dean Harada
Jessica Ackerley: Ice Pulse  5:14
Drone and Interstitials by Gahlord Dewald: CommandLine (versions 3-8)

All tracks recorded and mixed by the artists, except where otherwise noted
Mastered by Stephan Wunderlich at Justified Noise

Artwork & Design by Gina Borgia
Cover images from Holoholo by Gahlord Dewald