Berlin, DE | The Discogs Guide To Berlin Record Stores: Berlin has enjoyed its reputation as one of Europe’s most important cultural hubs for over a century. Musically, the German capital has been a flashpoint for a vast spectrum of sounds: from classical to jazz, prog rock and Krautrock, punk and post-punk, avant-garde and pop, to the thumping beat that’s fueled Berlin’s nightlife for the last three decades, techno. In the same way that there is a scene for every music subculture in Berlin, there is a record store to satisfy every music lover’s tastes. With 87 individual stores, Berlin boasts the second highest concentration of record stores per capita in the world (beaten only by Tokyo), so there is plenty of room for every type of vinyl-slinger. Here are just some of the essential stops on the maps, including the traditional 2nd hand outlets, quirky specialists, DJ meccas and long-running institutions.
Aberdeen, UK | Plans submitted for takeaway in former Aberdeen record store: A former music shop and centre of Aberdeen’s cultural scene could be transformed into a takeaway. Plans have been submitted to convert 17 Belmont Street from a shop to a hot food restaurant selling items with a little Gallic flair. In 2013, the council made use of the empty property as a base for its ill-fated UK City Of Culture bid. For the three decades prior to that, the building had been home to the One Up record store. The independent music shop fell victim to the changing fortunes of the high street after 34 years, despite being a favourite of famous musicians and bands including Noel Gallagher, Biffy Clyro and Stereophonics. Now, Brighter North Recruitment has commissioned architects to oversee the transformation of the building once again, this time into a French food takeaway. Albyn Architects has lodged proposals to change the use of the ground floor of the council-owned building on the firm’s behalf.
London, UK | ‘It’s magical what they’re doing’: Buy one of the finest reproduced vinyl you’ll ever hear. To some extent the vinyl resurgence of the last decade has been fuelled by reissues. But no reissue label has gone to the same extremes as Electric Recording to recreate the recordings of the Fifties and Sixties, writes Ben Sisario. Interested? Then you better start saving now… Tucked in a trendy co-working complex in west London, just past the food court and the payment processing start-up, is perhaps the most technologically backward-looking record company in the world. The Electric Recording Company, which has been releasing music since 2012, specialises in meticulous recreations of classical and jazz albums from the 1950s and 1960s. Its catalogue includes reissues of landmark recordings by Wilhelm Furtwangler, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, as well as lesser-known artists favoured by collectors, like violinist Johanna Martzy. But what really sets Electric Recording apart is its method – a philosophy of production more akin to the making of small-batch gourmet chocolate than most shrinkwrapped vinyl.
Will CDs Replace Vinyl as the New Retro-Modern Music Fad? It doesn’t seem like CDs have much of a chance of coming back anytime soon, but neither did vinyl records or cassettes. First introduced in the early 1980s, CDs quickly surpassed vinyl records and cassette tapes to become the main way that we listened to music. Starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, the popularity of CDs started to wane as digital music distribution began its upward climb. Now though, we’ve seen vinyl come back to the point where they’re selling almost as much as CDs, and may even outsell them soon. Cool as it is, vinyl is expensive to produce, which means some artists have turned to cassettes, which was unthinkable not that long ago. Is the CD the next format to reappear in the mainstream spotlight, or is the digital physical disc set to remain a thing of the past? In 2019, roughly 46.5 million CDs were shipped in the United States. That might sound like a lot, but that’s actually the lowest total in decades.
Andover Model-One Turntable Music System Reviewed: More often than not, the deciding factor on what makes an AV product “good” or “bad” comes down to performance. But is this really what modern AV equipment is really all about: being either good or bad? What if performance were a given? What then? What would cause a product to go from being good to great, or bad to worse? I’ve been asking myself this very question a lot lately, since in 2020 (as bad as this year has been) everything I’ve tested in terms specialty AV has been pretty great from the perspective of performance. Let’s face it: when we criticize a component at any level, we’re really just nitpicking and playing to our base, because 90 percent of the general public either wouldn’t be bothered by our gripe or wouldn’t notice it. So, what makes a product special? I argue what separates a product from the herd in 2020 isn’t performance, value, or any other AV buzz word. It really comes down to whether or not you actually use the thing, and in using said thing does it bring you joy?
