“I grew up with vinyl. My parents kept a turntable as part of their hifi system long after everyone had completely moved to CD, and by the time they stopped using it that much themselves, I was using it so often that they kept it plugged in.”
“I remember once, when I was about eight, forgetting to turn the power amp on and being absolutely amazed by the fact that you could still hear the music, simply from the grooves spinning against the needle.
My parent’s record collection was cool and still has had a big impact on the music I make. It was a brilliant mix of Scottish folk artists like Dick Gaughan, The Battlefield Band, and Dougie MacLean (my mum) and 60s/70s prog like King Crimson and Pink Floyd (my dad). I think a lot of these LPs still exact their influence on me. In fact, in retrospect, the opening guitar line in title track from our new record Wake sounds like a poor man’s Gaughan. He’s still a very underrated acoustic guitar player.
I think I’ve spent a disproportionately large amount of my free time in record shops. I started collecting as a teenager, buying most of my vinyl from a shop in Perth called Goldrush Records. They didn’t really stock anything other than back catalogue (I don’t think they stocked much in the way of new or independent music) but the guys in there greatly improved my record collection.
My folks’ only Springsteen record, for example, was Born in the USA and though I liked it, I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by it, so John (in Goldrush) taught me to dig and now I’m pretty certain I own everything Springsteen ever recorded in a studio. He really is one of those artists—you need to scratch below the surface to get to the really good stuff.
Charity shops, too, have always been exciting for me as a vinyl collector as, although 99% of the time you realise you’ve just spend an hour and a half fingering through dusty and/or mouldy Carpenters and ABBA LPs, every now and then you pick up some original Buddy Holly, or find some Sonic Youth wedged between two copies of Acker Bilk’s Greatest Hits.
When it came to releasing our first EP as a band a couple of years ago, we decided to put it out on 10” only. I remember going through my favourite 10” records as reference points for what I wanted. We put so much thought into it and especially loved thinking about the space between side A and B. Zack (from our label) and I acted like a proper pair of vinyl geeks and were pishing ourselves at the thought of a 180g pressing.
You couldn’t even get it digitally unless you’d bought the vinyl for the first year—it took us about 18 months to break even but it felt good.”
— Seán McLaughlin
Dante’s new release Wake arrives at the end of October.
