“When I was 4 or 5 my family owned a Fisher-Price turntable and two albums that I played on a daily basis—Sesame Street, Big Bird Discovers the Orchestra and Walt Disney’s Story & Songs from Peter Pan. The latter was a picture disc, and as the record played my eyes would trace the orbits of images of Captain Hook, Tiger Lily, and the Darling children.”
“It was auto-hypnosis; along with the audio, the cumulative effect was transportative. The Big Bird album wasn’t a picture disc, but the album jacket was no less engrossing: it depicted and described the categorized instruments of an orchestra. The album audio relates the story of Big Bird being tasked with finding each of these instruments, as they had gone missing prior to some important performance. As this detective story progresses, the listener is asked to help Big Bird identify the sounds of each instrument, and the narrative culminates in a reunited orchestra playing something called “Big Bird’s Heroica Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Opus 55.” By the time I saw an orchestra performance in person I had an established bond with the sounds I was hearing and the instruments creating them. That was the beginning; I was obsessed.
My adult relationship with vinyl started about 7 years ago when I heard King Crimson’s Discipline at a Chicago hipster-bar called Rainbo Club. Years prior, an uncle of mine (himself a recording engineer) had given me a copy of the album on CD, but it was an early digital master, and hearing the album played back on vinyl I was made aware of compositional nuances that weren’t apparent in the digital version (I’ve since purchased Discipline on vinyl).
A good friend of mine contends that vinyl worship is tantamount to idol worship—that the compact disc was truly the apex of consumer playback fidelity and vinyl records mere fetish objects. In some quantifiable ways, he’s right—CDs’ dynamic headroom and reproduction accuracy across the frequency spectrum is superior. But having now gone through the process of hearing my band’s latest recording reproduced on both media, I can say with confidence that there are some things vinyl simply does better. There’s more dimension in the stereo image, more room for the disparate elements of a mix to comfortably cohabitate within. And vinyl can deliver a low-end punch and focus that feels like it’s in the room with you.
The practical realities of vinyl encourage album monogamy. Yes, it’s nice to be able to shuffle through your entire musical library, letting chance be your matchmaker. But there’s a turntable next to my work desk at home, and on that turntable for the past two months has lived Neverendless by CAVE. Not only is it a killer album for productivity (neo-Krautrock makes me mentally efficient!), but at this point it feels like an old, trustworthy friend.
Fittingly, buying an album on vinyl is now, for me, the last step in a long courtship. I’ll flirt with unfamiliar artists on a streaming service. If I want a second go-round, I’ll buy the album on iTunes (or, preferably, Bandcamp). If I find myself listening to the thing front-to-back, days on end, never skipping a track, asking myself “where is this going?” that’s when I’ll commit. (I’d like to take this moment to announce my happy engagement to Wye Oak’s Shriek.)
I won’t say categorically whether one listening experience—digital or vinyl—is superior to the other, but in a culture that increasingly celebrates both HD hyper-reality and an overwhelming infinity of Options, it makes a lot of sense to me why, for music listeners of a certain ilk, the immediacy and intimacy of vinyl increases in popularity year over year.”
—Owen O’Malley
Bailiff’s EP “Remise” is available now, and their follow up EP, “RemiseII” is due October 7. Enter to win a bundled edition of their EPs, “Remise” and “RemiseII“—on vinyl—by citing in the comments below the LP that you’re presently quite monogamous with. (It’s a love story, you know.) We’ll choose one thoroughly smitten winner with a North American mailing address a week from today, August 21!
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PHOTO: MELISSA LIN ELLIS
