Bridging the Gap

No theme, no plan tonight. Instead, we'll be zig-zagging our way through a handful of different genres anywhere from tropical world to chillout. It's about the journey, not the destination -right?

Tonight, a slew of new (and new-ish) releases ranging from soul and jazz to indie and experimental. New music, hot off the press.

The Hawaiʻi Internation Film Festival (HIFF) opened last week, and I was curious as to what some of my favorite local film makers are listening to. So tonight is episode 1 of my HPR + HIFF collab. The idea is to feature the music that some of my favorite local film makers are currently vibing.

While our beloved captain of the Bridging The Gap team is off galavanting in the Nihon motherland, I've decided to commemorate the veteran DJ himself by curating tonight's show in his honor. Every song in tonight's show is a song or artist I have been turned on to by sassy-pants himself, either from his old KTUH show "The Jet Set," or from Bridging The Gap, or his various club sets over the years. In a way, it'll be like he never left...

No serious theme for this session of Bridging the Gap... just keeping it fun and eclectic  to get us into the weekend in style.

If you fell asleep to this playlist, I don't think I could blame you. No blazing guitar riffs, high-octave vocals or any such musical intensity tonight. Just a whole lot of mellow indie and alternative with a few obscure tracks thrown in for good measure to help you ease into your Thursday evening.

Electronic music dominates this session of Bridging the Gap... Chunky funky deep house meets different shades of Drum & Bass.

Fact: I am a 90s baby. Additional fact: I'm going to see the Backstreet Boys live here in Honolulu and am beyond stoked. So in honor of fulfilling my lifelong 90s-baby dream, I decided (under dj mrnick's heavily judgemental watch) to do a 90s throwback show featuring some of my favorite hip hop/R&B/indie rock tracks that I grew up with.

This show is based around a long 30 minute song from The Three Sounds called Soul Symphony... and the music is going to follow suite weaving in and out of Jazz, Downtempo, and Indie with a little strings.

Kicking off the 1st of November with a warm blend of indie rock and deep house.

You've heard it before: the "typical" Halloween playlist that gets recycled at every haunted house and costume party. Well, not here on Bridging the Gap. 

Instead, we'll be playing weird, obscure, alternative and eclectic tracks rife with macabre, spooky and general ghastly imagery.

T'was the night before Halloween and we're listening to songs to get you in the mood for fear... with an eclectic blend of Rock, Americana and Classical.

It's a couple days before Halloween, but why not start getting into the mood? Tonight's show is a collection of various dark-themed tracks - find something for your Halloween party or to play in the back while you pass out candy to all the eager trick-or-treaters.

Warming up with some modern soul, downtempo and bossa tonight on Bridging the Gap.

Jumping around world music and just a little 80's flair for this session of Bridging the Gap.

If you've ever seen "Walk Hard," a 2007 film which parody's the musician biopic genre, you might remember a scene where the movie's lead sings a ridiculously arcane tune which obviously imitates some of Bob Dylan's early style. The opening lyrics go "Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum..."

Ridiculous, right? Well, how fun would it be to play an entire show chock full of tracks with weird, esoteric and downright incomprehensible lyrics? Let's find out.

HPR's Generation Listen Group is celebrating their 2nd anniversary by turning HPR studios into a vintage prohibition-era speakeasy... and they asked me to soundtrack one of the rooms. So tonight's show is part 2 of a sneak peak of the playlist filled with vintage jazz, early rhumba, a little tango and more. You can pick up tickets HERE .

  Two weeks ago I did an all-women's voices themed show. Tonight we're bringing balance back to the universe and highlighting some of my favorite male voices in music. Definitely not a definitive list of male voices, but just a sampler based on some of my favorite smooth crooners.

The name in the title just sounds cool. Truth is that I'm still a little loopy from giving blood this afternoon. So this session of Bridging the Gap is going to be a mellow and jazzy with little pockets of world music.

Keeping the music pulsing for this session of Bridging the Gap with little pockets of house fueled latin, jazz and soul.

Tonight on Bridging the Gap, we'll be going back to the murky, acid-drenched origins of garage rock, psychedelic rock and early hard rock. Expect to hear primarily lesser known cuts from early garage rockers and foreign trailblazers (with a few modern tracks here and there). Best enjoyed at high volume.

Indie Rock, sometimes know as College Rock is the backbone of AAA radio, which is the foundation of this show. It's also something that I don't always pay that much attention to although is so much good music coming out all the time. So this session of Bridging the Gap will focus on some of my favorites, both old and new.

On last night's edition of Bridging The Gap, dj mr.nick curated a show in honor of Indigenous Peoples day, but he graciously forgot the one indigenous people that I happen to be an expert on: Hawaiians. So tonight's Bridging The Gap is the Hawaiian edition of last night's Indigenous Peoples show honoring ka poʻe ʻoiwi o nei paeʻāina.

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day! Tonight's song selection is going to reflect the progress of 1st Nations and other people in this country struggling to attain freedom, and a reminder that we are all illegal.

Light and tropical for this session of Bridging the Gap. The perfect get-you-up and get-you-out-the-door and to the beach or nightclub playlist.

It seems like another week of heavy news stories emerging all across the globe, so to remedy that somewhat we'll be playing some world music here on Bridging the Gap tonight. Tons of afrobeat, psychedelic and soul from the four corners of our hectic world.

HPR's Generation Listen Group is celebrating their 2nd anniversary by turning HPR studios into a vintage prohibition-era speakeasy... and they asked me to soundtrack one of the rooms. So tonight's show is a sneak peak of the playlist filled with vintage jazz, early rhumba and more. You can pick up tickets HERE.

Inspired by NPR's "Turning The Table: 8 Women Who Invented American Popular Music" piece, tonight's show honors the 8 women that the piece centers around (Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Maybelle Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson, Rosetta Tharpe, Celia Cruz, and Mary Lou Williams) along with other female artists, old and new, whose music draws inspiration from them in one way or another.

Ginger Baker is dead. The polyrhythmic drummer from Cream passed away today at 80, and is the inspiration for tonight's psychedelic rock heavy session of Bridging the Gap.

Woot! That's a wrap for the Fall 2019 Pledge Drive! Thank you to everyone who became a member during this drive, and thank you to everyone who contunies to support Public Radio.