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, feels most potent in its earliest days with its back-to-back triage of eponymous albums, starting with 1975’s Kalapana I and capping with 1977’s Kalapana III. By then, Mackey had left the group and keyboardist Kirk Thompson would soon carve his own path with Lemuria, Babadu, and other soulful projects. Even the most casual listener can discern a stylistic shift with III, which opens with Malani’s “Girl” and closes with D.J. Pratt’s “Alisa Lovely”. Following Aloha Got Soul’s vinyl reissue of Kalapana’s first and second albums, we asked ourselves what we’d want to see in Kalapana’s catalog.
Spanning 10 songs across five records, the Aloha Got Soul selects Kalapana 7-inch box set compiles all our favorite tunes that we love to play loud and proud, the songs that get people dancing, singing, laughing and loving.
Compiled from the band’s first three albums, each track is a certified jam. From Kalapana I, we selected the all-time classic grooves “The Hurt”, “What Do I Do”, “When The Morning Comes”, “All I Want”, and “Everything Is Love”. From their sophomore release, we chose the delightfully funky “Love Em”, and the uptempo jazz-rock tunes “Freedom” and “Black Sand”. From their third LP, we pulled our go-to tracks: the instrumental latin jazz-burner “Mana” and the ultra-catchy bop “Up To You”.
These are the Kalapana jams constantly on repeat for us. (We excluded ballads from our selection because we wanted this box set to be bangers from start to finish.)
Each box set is foil-stamped and numbered as part of a limited edition.
It contains five 7-inch records with custom Kalapana paper sleeves, and sealed with custom Kalapana tape. Each vinyl has a song lyric etched into the vinyl’s deadwax (the blank area in between the grooves and the label).
