Independent Shop And Label alt.vinyl To Close: Independent online record shop and label alt.vinyl has announced that it is to close after 13 years. It began life as a record shop based in Newcastle opened by Graham Thrower, but soon changed to an online-only organisation, while remaining very much rooted in its northern surroundings putting out records from Richard Dawson and :zoviet*france: amongst others. In total, the label released more than 70 records. “It’s been great to have been a part of a global independent music community but the time is right… this cycle has come to a close,” Thrower wrote on the label’s website. “At the risk of a long post I’d just like to thank all those artists that alt.vinyl has had the pleasure to work with…”
Nostalgia for vinyl? Hamilton store’s 5,000 records can help: A new record shop in Hamilton aims to bring the resurgent vinyl format back to the forefront of people’s minds. Main Street Vinyl at 227 Main Street offers “a little bit of everything,” including albums from rock, soul, blues, country, jazz and reggae artists and groups. “You’ve got to have variety,” said store owner Bill Herren, whose collection of nearly 5,000 records, displayed in the business and stored in back, provides the bulk of the store’s inventory…“CDs are fading out and vinyl’s back,” Herren said. “There’s more vinyl sold in the last year that’s been sold since the 1980s … so it’s a good time to do it.”
Craft beer meets vintage records at The Vinyl Room: At first glance, The Vinyl Room could be a standard craft beer bar. Four local brews are on tap, with a selection canned beer and wine, and a light food menu. But guests will also find vinyl-packed shelves and turntables sure to delight any music fan. Equal parts bar and record shop, The Vinyl Room plans to combine the two interests into one unique addition to Wappingers Falls’ Main Street. And, it could be open by late-June.The business stems from owner John Kihlmire’s passion for music and beer. “I’ve been collecting vinyl since I was 15 years old,” he said. “More recently, I’ve really gotten into sour beer.” But The Vinyl Room isn’t just a mash-up of Kihlmire’s interests.
Seeking refuge in vinyl records during China’s cultural revolution: Around the beginning of the 1960s, our father spent 400 RMB to buy a Peony radio-record player. The record player, in particular, was quite high-tech back then: four-speed selection with automatic stopping coupled with a speed-detection regulation system. I imagined the flood of music that would flow out of the tiny red-and-green power light, turning our lives totally transparent, as if we lived inside a glass house. Father, however, didn’t particularly understand music, his purchase, while linked with an infatuation with modern technology, was more a reflection of his romantic temperament, a sharp contrast to the ominous age taking shape around us. An age when people endured constant hunger and busied themselves just trying to scrape by, living hand to mouth—idle ears seemed superfluous.
Reinventing the record: New Burlington factory turns out vinyl albums: Vinyl fanatics have a new champion in Gerry McGhee. McGhee is the proud vice president of Precision Pressing, a state-of-the-art vinyl record manufacturing facility in Burlington. The 20,000-sq.-ft. plant celebrated its official opening on May 11. It may be weird to describe a factory as beautiful, but that’s exactly what Precision is — a light-filled, high-ceilinged, scrupulously clean structure filled with handsome pressing machines and dozens of enthusiastic employees. Precision Pressing is a labour of love for McGhee, 55. He’s a lifer in the music industry — as both a musician and an executive — and Precision Pressing represents years of hard work and perseverance on his part to serve the global vinyl resurgence.
