Kyiv, UA | A new record shop is opening in Kyiv: Launching this weekend, the Podil store will specialise in hard electronic music. …Specialising in hard electronic music, the store sits in a shared creative arts hub in the heart of Kyiv’s clubbing district, Podil. Two of the founders, Beth Alana and Adrian, recently moved from Berlin, while the third, Illia Novikov, is a Ukrainian DJ with experience running parties and clubs. “A record store is important,” Novikov told Resident Advisor. “It’s a unique source of rare and interesting vinyl releases that were previously unavailable for local listeners, having the potential to significantly influence key parts of Kyiv’s club scene.” Alana told RA that the idea for the shop struck her soon after moving to Kyiv, when she realised there was nowhere to buy the kind of records she loves. “There is nowhere to really dig for hard music!,” she said. “As I asked more DJs, this seemed to be an apparent problem for the vinyl DJs in Ukraine.”
Barrow, UK | Popular record shop in Barrow to host hotly anticipated Black Friday event: A popular Barrow record shop are set to host their last Record Store Day of the year at the end of the month, and it not one to be missed, according to the shop owner. TNT Records presents its final special event of the year on November 26, offering even more extremely limited-edition releases to get your hands on. This event is the Black Friday version of the Record Store Day – which is when hundreds of independent record shops across the UK come together to celebrate their unique culture. Special vinyl releases are made exclusively for the day and many shops and cities host artist performances and events to mark the occasion. Thousands more shops celebrate the day in what’s become one of the biggest annual events on the music calendar.
New York, NY | Check out this new record store in the East Village: Find records of all kinds at Ergot on East 2nd Street. Although it might seem counterintuitive to establish a new business at the tail end (hopefully) of a global pandemic, the venture seems to be paying off for 30-year-old Adrian Rew, the founder and owner of record store Ergot. “The pandemic actually provided me with an opportunity,” says the store owner over the phone. “Rent was cheaper and people have been spending more time at home, therefore treasuring their music collections more. I also think that, more than ever, people crave the intimacy of the physical object.” Ergot, which opened less than two months ago on East 2nd Street and Second Avenue, is the evolution of Rew’s eponymous music label. The entrepreneur, who graduated from Oberlin College a few years back, received a grant from the school to start a label. After working in a record store and at a non-profit, he decided to strike out on his own and set up a brick-and-mortar.
Chicago, IL | Digging into the legacy of Chicago’s Gramaphone Records: “…The role that record stores take is an experience that probably [involves] all five senses of a person — your visual, your oral, your scent, your smell. You walk into a record store and there’s a smell that you smell from the records. There’s the visual, which is the records physically themselves, or the design or the artwork displayed in the store, and the interaction socially between people shopping. There’s always the customer that doesn’t ever want to talk to anybody, the person who starts chatting up another person or has questions for you. Even though there [are] algorithms online that can help a person shop, there [are] still people who are like, “Oh, thanks for the recommendations. I wouldn’t have even thought of this or found this if I was shopping online.” It definitely is an experience for some people who are not just in the digital realm, if they’re looking for something physical for themselves that pertains to music and art.
St. Petersburg, FL | Now at The Factory St. Pete: Daddy Kool Records: The doors officially opened today at Daddy Kool Records, inside The Factory St. Pete. It’s not the first location for the vinyl, CD and music memorabilia store, nor is it the second or third. But this one, at 2606 Fairfield Avenue S, is home, according to owner Manny Kool. “It’s a new thing,” said the veteran music retailer, whose real name is Manny Matalon. “As we have more events here, and people start to realize ‘Oh, here it is,’ and see that it’s easy to get to, as time goes on hopefully people will become more familiar with it.” Kool sees his relationship with The Factory – itself a relatively new arrival to the Warehouse Arts District – as symbiotic. “I think our name recognition is going to help all the other businesses,” he said. “It’s like, hey, we’ve got the name and a lot of traffic – you guys have got a lot of space and a lot of cool things happening. “So hopefully together it’s all going to gel.”
Record Store Recs: Paula Temple Shares Her Techno And Ambient Picks & Discusses Finding Inspiration With Moog: Hard-hitting techno DJ/producer Paula Temple shares her finds from the techno and ambient sections of Stellar Remnant’s vinyl pop-up at CRSSD Fest 2021, and details her teenage DJ beginnings and what’s inspiring her to make music now. For the first-ever IRL iteration of Record Store Recs since its launch in May 2020 to support record stores and artists during the pandemic, a few of the DJ/producers who played CRSSD Festival 2021 in September joined GRAMMY.com at the Stellar Remnant popup. British hard techno queen Paula Temple found bangers in the techno section, of course, along with an album from her favorite ambient artist. Under the warm San Diego sun, the producer detailed her selections with GRAMMY.com, along with what she thinks makes a great dance track, her teen years sharing the gospel of Jeff Mills at the record shop where she worked, and more.
Norwich, UK | Trapped squirrels and £4,000 records – behind Norwich’s Press to Play: With its walls adorned with pictures of Jim Morrison, the Beatles and David Bowie, Press to Play been in Norwich for over 23 years. During that time, owner Andy Tillett has served star shoppers including Jools Holland, Bob Geldof and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore at the store on the city’s St Benedict’s Street. He says that when he started in October 1997, videos and CDs were the best sellers, with vinyl almost treated as a thing of the past. Mr Tillett said: “It’s almost turned around now, it goes vinyl first, CDs second and DVDs last. “Vinyl was certainly not popular in 1997, everybody was wanting CDs, even the major shops like Virgin hardly did vinyl. They might have done a little but not a lot. “Hardly anything was being pressed, that’s why the records of Britpop bands like Suede are worth a fortune now as they were such limited runs on vinyl.”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza soundtrack set for vinyl release: Featuring Nina Simone, David Bowie, Jonny Greenwood, Sonny & Cher, and more. The soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza film is being released on vinyl, via Republic Records this November. Directed by Anderson, Licorice Pizza follows Alana Kane and Gary Valentine as they navigate San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. The soundtrack features music from Sonny & Cher, The Doors, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, Nina Simone, Jonny Greenwood, Chris Norman, and more. Pre-order Licorice Pizza here in advance of its 26th November release, check out the artwork and tracklist below.
Nashville, TN | Two Decades On, Dualtone Records Keeps Trucking: Talking with the label’s Scott Robinson and Paul Roper about respecting the past as they navigate a changing industry. Twenty years ago, when Nashville record label Dualtone Music Group opened for business, the concept of Americana music existed in a primordial state. It was the era of the Coen brothers’ mythological roots-music film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, rock-country bands like Whiskeytown and Old 97’s, and singer-songwriters on the order of Gillian Welch and Rodney Crowell. All these years later, the genre might define Nashville music as much as mainstream country does, and that’s partly due to the efforts of Dualtone. Of course, Americana isn’t just about Nashville, just as Dualtone’s catalog contains what you might call Americana-adjacent music. Still, Dualtone’s philosophy of record-making and music marketing has helped define a musical ethos that shows no sign of fading away.
ABBA score fastest-selling vinyl release of the 21st century with Voyage: ABBA’s return is now officially one of the biggest comebacks of the modern era. Voyage (Polydor), the group’s first album in four decades, has debuted at No.1 with sales of 203,909 – the biggest weekly sale since Ed Sheeran’s second week at the summit with ÷ in March 2017. It’s also the fastest-selling album by a group since One Direction’s Midnight Memories in November 2013. ABBA are only the fourth act in the past decade to surpass 200,000 chart sales in release week – the others are One Direction’s Midnight Memories, Adele’s 25 in November 2015 and Ed Sheeran’s ÷ in March 2017. …As revealed in Music Week’s charts analysis, consumption of Voyage is heavily skewed to physical sales, which make up 89.53% of its total. Its vinyl sales of 29,891 copies surpassed the previous 21st century record of 24,478 copies for Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino in May 2018. Voyage also sold 148,471 copies on CD, and 4,205 copies on cassette.
