Episode 49: Hawaii94

Hot Takes

This week on "Hot Takes", Skelly and Shiro managed to source Leroy Honeycomb all the way from Melbourne, Australia for an evening chat (well, it was evening for us)! A multi-instrumentalist that's been playing since long before the independent electronic music explosion in the late 2000's, Lee is half of the monumental psychedelic vaporwave duo Surfing, and has released music under the names Hawaii94, Neoclone, and Skyraider. We have been wanting to bring on a guest that isn't living in the Americas since the show's inception, and being that he is so skilled and such a dear friend of ours, our top choice as first non-American guests was definitely Leroy! An OG auteur in the chillwave and vaporwave scenes, Lee peeled back a layer and gave us the 411 on the division of labor between he and Penny, the other member in Surfing. He admitted his dislike of metal and top 40 music to us, gave us a crash course on his production flow, and intimated his thoughts on the differences between independent musicians in the US and independent musicians in Australia. Over the course of what felt like a very short two hours, we talked a lot about Lee's collection of guitars and effect pedals, and he warmed our hearts with his story about finally meeting Skelly in real life for the first time after being Facebook friends for years. Despite some notable issues with Leroy's mic, we made the most of it and enjoyed geeking out over Mr. Nonsense's curated content in the early 2010's, discussed the similarities between the goth and vaporwave scenes, and heard about Leroy's techniques that he uses to bring guitar tracking into his electronic work. If you weren't there live, check out the replay of our evening with Hawaii94!

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