Miles Maeda is a house DJ/producer based in California who has deep ties to Chicago, where he established himself artistically during the early to mid-'90s before moving to sunny San Diego in 1995 and getting into the yoga business. Born and raised in Hawaii, Maeda moved to the Midwest in the late '80s and attended school at Indiana University in Bloomington. While in college he worked at the university's radio station and got deeply into the early Chicago house and Detroit techno that were coming to light at the time. In pursuit of his newfound musical interests, he traveled to Chicago frequently to visit Gramophone Records, the storied record store where Derrick Carter worked at the time, and ultimately he relocated from Bloomington to Chicago, where he lived until 1995. During the early '90s he joined the city's house DJ circuit, notably co-founding the Material and Atmospheric Audio Chair club nights. In 1995 he moved to San Diego, where he got into the yoga business while maintaining his ties to Chicago via a long-running residency at Smartbar that began in 1998. Meanwhile, he traveled internationally as a house DJ and, beginning in the late '90s, released production work on various labels. Maeda's output began to peak in 2004, when he released a pair of DJ mixes on Igloo Music (The New House Sound of Chicago and A la Peanut Budder Sandwiches, the latter a downtempo mix originally released in the early '90s) and a series of 12" EPs (Crafty Work, Robsoul Recordings; The Concrete Pop, Anonymous Recordings; Things Are Things, Aroma). His production output remained prolific in subsequent years, including 12" EP releases on Kolour Recordings, Odds & Ends Music, Red Brunette, .dotbleep, LowDown Music, Dust Traxx, Bambino Recordings, Gimme Some Records, Dae Recordings, Lust4House, Outergaze, Primal Records, Bump Music, and Bopsa Music, among other labels. ~ Jason Birchmeier