Delorentos, The TVD First Date

“My relationship with vinyl was always really clear—my dad’s record collection.”

“Since I was old enough to drool, tear, throw, or simply stamp, I was barred from the magical slide-door cabinet which held about 50 dog-eared record sleeves—hidden away, protected from my grubby hands. Every Beatles studio album, Abba, The Kinks, Roy Orbison, Simon & Garfunkel, and my favourite, Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens. Not for the music of course, but the brilliant cartoon cover.

All these iconic albums of mostly early ’70s music from when my Dad was a young teen. Sometimes I would take them all out—under supervision—and just look through them. Fold out the card cover. Gently slide out the shiny record and the torn inner sleeve. Often on summer days when all the windows and doors were open, a record would go on, and I’d sit inside on the floor, cross-legged, and read the lyrics and dedications and credits while the music played.

CDs were around of course, but they were boring compared to these historic crackly artifacts. The covers were tiny and you had to squint to read where the record was mastered and who the associate to the mixer was.

When I got older, I decided that when I had my own house I would have a grand record collection and decorate the walls with my favourite albums. Each of my favourites would go around the top of the walls in a train, like a colourful coving. Later, I decided I would make a list of my favourite album from each year I was alive and I would make sure I had the vinyl, so as to create a live archive of my life in music.

Now that I do have a house and a potential stampy smashy kid, the records are up high and only come out when it’s time to dance (Abba again). The thoughts of sticking records around the walls of every room makes me swoon with the impracticality and the dusting. I haven’t completed my own life-archive, but I’m getting there slowly and in a relaxed fashion with an album arriving every few months.

With each new album we release we get a happy day where we get a beautiful heavyweight black vinyl, and our new album is no different. The pride is huge. I MADE a historic crackly artifact! I’m almost too precious—the new album True Surrender sits encased in thin plastic on the shelf above my turntable, as ever, protected from my grubby hands.
—Kieran McGuinness