A claim by trendy retailer Urban Outfitters, supposedly the new global leader in vinyl sales, spawned a media storm that erupted into discussions about the finer points of Mom and Pop record stores, why buying from a conglomerate is bad and generally slamming Calvin Hollinger for driving more nails into the coffins of independent record stores already suffering dramatically in the face of convenience buying. But why? Because Urban Outfitters isn’t a record store first and foremost. Continue Reading
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Urban Outfitters is not a Record Store
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Buying Records Online: A few Recommendations
It happens. Your local record stores crates are empty for a few weeks. Other shops seem to be hit with the same dry spell and you still want something new to take home and enjoy. So you shop online. You have to. With the variety of online resources available for record buying it can be hard to decide where to spend your money.
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VinylHub.com – The New One-stop Record Shop Location Database
Discogs new project, VinylHub, makes shopping for records in any city easier with its growing index of 2,020 stores. Like Discogs, VinylHub relies on input from users to contribute information about stores in their community. For collectors, these two sites are indispensable for research, cataloguing and finding new places to shop. Continue Reading
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Repress, Reissue and Remaster Explained
I’ve heard a few stories of people walking into local record stores with sealed reissues of rare albums under the impression the item was an original and worth big money. It reminds me of how convoluted the terminology applied to records can be and how easy it is to make this mistake if you’ve had no previous exposure to collecting. Publishers, editors and reviewers are also sometimes unaligned on how or why each term applies to records in general. In response to that, here’s a few notes on three popular terms: repress, reissue and remaster. Continue Reading
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Eno + Hyde: High Life
Baby’s on fire. Brian Eno’s pairing with Karl Hyde has produced two albums so far, recorded back-to-back and released on Warp. Someday World dropped earlier this year but the follow-up, High Life, found its way into the Eno cadre. The pair of albums distinctly separate themselves as individual works not companion pieces. The first is a tighter set of electro-tinged tracks and the latter presenting Eno experimenting with the recurrent themes of ambient drone, African-influenced pop and expansive soundscapes. In brief, both are the opposite of 2012’s Lux. Continue Reading
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