Shiru and Kava join The Breakfast Show

Meet Kava and Shiru, our new Monday morning Breakfast Show hosts!

Kava is a record detective at OYE Records, hailing from Aotearoa - New Zealand, well adept at easing you into the week with his genre-fluid selections. On alternating Mondays, he shares the day with Shiru, a London-born, Berlin-based DJ, as she wakes you up gently with her culture-centred morning melodies, sharing tunes she enjoys outside of the club environment.

Get to know your new hosts in conversation below, where they share philosophies on music, give sneak peeks of the vibes they’ll bring, and more.

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What’s your favourite breakfast?

Shiru: Depends, but right now: green tea and fried eggs with chilli oil.

Kava: It’s seasonal. I like different porridges in winter when it’s cold, with lots of nuts. Eggs of any kind. In the summer, fruits are also my favourite. I must say, though, don’t eat leftover döner for breakfast.

How would you describe your selector style in the DJ booth?

Shiru: For my shows, I normally have some kind of theme or concept that I select the music around. It’s more specific than The Breakfast Show, where I usually play tunes that are a bit more easygoing, still keeping a little narrative thread through each track. That’s why I love listening to The Breakfast Shows because they ease you into your day. Hosts play what they want and venture out of their usual genre. Or play things you wouldn’t play in a bar/club. Tunes for waking up slowly and putting on a cup of tea.

Kava: For Monday, it’s a low-stress kind of vibe easing into the week. Trying to invoke optimistic determination and chill motivation.

I’m a big fan of the narrative arc. This is the start of the arc for the week, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re optimistic. In a cinematic sense, it's the opening scenes of the first act. Maybe we’re a little curious, not overly gushy, letting the flower unfurl while still considering what happened on the weekend. I like to think of it like the ideal alarm clock. Finding a good harmony of encouragement and energy.

How did you get into the music world?

Shiru: I’ve been hosting shows and DJing for around three years. I started doing the radio show at Refuge Worldwide before I knew how to mix. I learned how to use everything on-air. Refuge was the perfect place to get started.

Kava: Haha, I’ve been around the block. I started collecting records and Djing in 1995. I’m from Aotearoa New Zealand, and as a music/culture hungry teenager I would always hang around record stores, Student Radio stations, and any raves, bars or clubs I was lucky enough to sneak or be snuck into. They say “Birds of a feather flock together”, and for me, that was true in the late 90s in Wellington. 

At Refuge, I was lucky to be invited to do the OYE show and feature on a Gavsbourg takeover. I would be hanging out at Oona sometimes after those sessions, and end up having cool chats with this random chill dude about music and stuff, haha, I didn't know it was George, one of the managers! He reached out and was like, “Do you want to come and do a breakfast show?” After a few test runs with no major blunders, here we are.

Compared to when you first started, how has your music progressed?

Kava: I'd like to think it's become more nuanced and elegant, but in reality, I still don't entirely know what I'm doing. I just have more records, am forever discovering stuff, more open-minded, and a little better at playing the right thing at the right time.

Shiru: I used the shows to learn and explore a lot of music. They were like research projects. I’d have an idea, like playing music from different islands around Africa. Through this, I learned a lot about music I didn’t know. Now, I have a broader understanding of music from different places. Whereas before, it was more random and less intentional. I still listen to a lot of music I grew up with, so a lot of the music I play is what my parents listened to. In my house, we had Cesária Évora, Youssou N'Dour, big African popular music, but also lots of jazz. Both my parents liked rock too, especially Bruce Springsteen.

On my own, I listened to a lot of hip-hop and R&B. Now, I explore the discographies of particular musicians, deep dive into specific genres, or delve into a country's music history. I’ve been learning more about Kenyan music. I knew it by ear, but didn’t know the specific genres or the history. I love that about radio shows. Before Refuge, I didn’t take that approach. Now I research and learn so much. It’s a culture-centred practice for sure.

I grew up in London listening to music around me. Now I know a lot more, even about the music I thought I knew. Dub, grime, stuff I listened to when I was young but wasn’t old enough to be in the scene—now I can recognise it and understand it better.

What’s your favourite thing about music?

Kava:

Music can elevate the vibe, be healing, energising, and inspiring. Music helps us celebrate magical times and gets us through tough ones. It nourishes the soul and helps us see the magical things in this seemingly dark world.

Shiru: It feels like work in the sense that I can spend hours on something, but it's always fun. Unlike writing, which often feels hard, selecting music feels effortless. You don’t have to explain or defend yourself. You can just say, “I like this,” or “this fits.” It’s a straightforward way to express what I’m feeling, externalising emotion through soundscapes. I’m not so into the technicalities of mixing. It’s more like: can I make this sound good and be fun? So that other people enjoy it too?

Do you have a vision for your music?

Kava: In the bigger picture: A continuation of the narrative arc. More storytelling. In the smaller picture: Killer Tunes, Bad Riddims, Smooth Deep cuts, Soundsystem Bangers with minimum Lysergic and/or Fromage factors of 6.7%.

Shiru: I take things as they come, so not really, but it would be cool to travel and play music. Use music as a way to connect with places, share energy with people, and learn from them. Going back to Kenya and playing music there would be amazing. The scene is really exciting. I’ve already played once at a festival there, and that was really cool. There are venues like The Mist in Nairobi; I know about it, but haven’t been. DJing and making radio shows is how I creatively express myself at the moment. Also writing poetry, more like diary writing. But music is the only thing I create and share publicly.

What most inspires your approach to music and what hopes do you have for the future of the music scene?

Kava: I’m a curious natured person, I get excited about getting to witness, support, help, and encourage people at the start of their creative journey. Ground zero grassroots stuff. It’s disheartening in these times we get tricked into thinking we need external validation as some sort of metric for success, when what we actually need is to just get together with some likeminded people and make some cool shit - that’s what inspires me. Allow the magic.

Shiru: Lots of radio shows. Refuge has many that inspire me. I love Lupercia and recently Dane Joe’s country show. Great artist name also, Dane Joe. One of my favourite shows was Bridontknow and Nzambiza’a Dancefloor Diaries, where they pit Ghanaian and Congolese music against each other, so fun and silly.

Also, KMRU, who I did a Breakfast Show with, is from Kenya. He has this dream to open a space there, and being part of something like that would be amazing. Something run by Kenyans, self-organised. The colonial past still shapes many of the creative spaces there, just as with everywhere—things are often owned by those in power. It’d be great to have more grassroots venues.

What can people expect vibe-wise for the show?

Shiru: I want to ease people in, but also surprise them. Maybe play things you wouldn’t expect for breakfast, perhaps some rhythmic tunes to accompany people at the start of the week: sitting in the sun, sipping coffee or tea, or reading. Hopefully, people get in the chat and interact!

Kava: Optimistic grim determination. Berlin’s like that. Sometimes it’s grim, but we’re still gonna get through! Berlin solidarity or something. 

Favourite hobby?

Kava: Making food and eating it haha, being outside, sharing music and food. After a long Berlin winter, as soon as it’s nicer, I want to be outside. Soak in the sun and light. 

Shiru: Cycling around, especially in summer. Playing music. I went to the lake on Tuesday and cycled back with music playing, it was so lovely.

Three words to describe yourself?

Kava: A. Curious. Monkey.

Shiru: In my feels.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Shiru: We’re your new Monday morning hosts on The Breakfast Show; we’ll alternate between the weeks, so I’m excited to listen to Kava’s work and see how we complement each other. Maybe we’ll do something together, a joint session.

Kava: And jump in the chat! :)

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Photos by Allan Whyte