While you get guest DJs to come play at your club, it’s not often you get a well known party to come and represent its entire philosophy. Chicago is in for a treat with its Pacific Flights Tour featuring Hawaii’s world renown party called Asylum. I spoke with one of its ambassadors and residents DJ Russoul on his current tour with Chicago’s own 18th Street West (Kristopher Muse) and the upcoming party at Primary this month.
Will this be your first time in Chicago? How do you know Kristopher?
This will be my second time I will coming up to Chicago, but my very first time playing out there, I met Kris back in May of this year as he was hanging out with my buddy Maris Moon who originally was living in Hawaii for a while. They were out in Hawaii to do the infamous Chicago Porn and Chicken Party, so after that party was over Kris came by to our party and he was chilling in our studio section of the club. The next night after, Kris came and I opened up for him and played at our club. Since then we kept in contact and eventually I met up with him after to go and hang out with him in Chicago before going to the Movement Festival in Detroit.
So tell our readers what is Asylum, what it means to you and why it’s so special? I understand that it is completely different from your typical afterhours club?
Asylum is an afterhours club in Honolulu and has been built by the DJs for DJs and other music enthusiasts who want to listen to good quality music. It’s a members only club which is great because it brings in the right people that wants to hear underground music and get away from the mainstream environment. We all share and express the Ohana (Hawaiian term meaning family) experience with other and show what really Hawaii is truly is. We all have known each other for over a decade and for some even longer. To be honest with you, this is the best crew of friends that I got to really know for a very long time and I’m very happy that we’re doing this together and making it happen.
The owners Zane, Willis Haltom, Cryptik and Marc were the one who invested in making this happen for us. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think Hawaii would be on the map yet. Much love to them for getting the club going for us to making all of our dreams to come true.
I’ve heard so many wonderful things about the scene in Honolulu. The energy of an island…how does that affect the music, the mood, the way people party as opposed to something more metropolitan like New York or Chicago?
We really strive in trying to create a friendly, positive, and family type of atmosphere, showing that aloha spirit. We just want to make sure that everyone who steps into asylum will leave out of the club of having the best experience in Hawaii and being able to spread that vibe to other citiesthese people go to. The mood of the music is a really key thing to our club.
Tell me about some of the residents at Asylum and how you rotate… Do all of you have similar styles or are you markedly different?
The residents that we have at our club are Willis Haltom, Zane, Loic Tambay, Hi-C, Bernies_Diction, Fathom, Cryptik, and Jimmy Lee. How we all rotate is like a tag type of the deal. We all will take turns. The residents do bring in all types of eclectic quality sounds to the club. Sometimes we all might have the same music in our crate selection, but at the end of it, we all use the tracks differently. As long we follow what we preach on bringing quality, then it shouldn’t matter what genre we play.
So I understand you and Kris will be going on a tour together? What music are you both working on?
Yes, Kris and I just started to tour together. We had realized that we wanted to finally go out and start doing some gigs across the United States. For me to go on my very first tour is a dream come true. To remind you folks, this was done with no booking agency which was good because we were able to make the deals ourselves without having the middle man. So just recently we started up our Pacific Flight Tour in the West Coast at the infamous Avalon Hollywood Club on the Terrace side for afterhours. What a gig I can say it was. It was really packed and the crowd there was 1/2 Hawaiian and 1/2 of the normal afterhours crowd they have there. Then right after that we had a few more gigs in both Oakland and San Fransisco.
The music that Kris and I have been making is deep house with the UK type futuristic garage sound. To us we wanted to add more of that bassy sound to deep house, it definitely gets the party going and keeps the floor fun and happy.
I really love your track on Soundcloud ‘Get Down’… is that out anywhere?
‘Get Down’ will be getting released on Asylum Confidential in December this year with another track I did called ‘Bass Fase’. Ardalan from dirtybird will be remixing the latter.
What can we expect at the Chicago party on the 24th? We’re all really excited!
What you could expect to see at this party is hearing a lot of bassy/deep house/garage sounds. Also I will be playing a handful of originals and some remixes I did that will be release on both Waska and Asylum Confidential Records in the near future. I’m really excited and honored to play in Chicago. Chicago is such a prestigious city that started up house music and its the roots are what started up everything.
DJ Russoul will be spinning alongside 18th Street West & Czboogie on Thursday, Oct. 24th at Primary (5 W. Division) from 10pm-4am. Hit him up on soundcloud, mixcloud or facebook.
