“We’ve always had a record player at home. A big Sony tower with double tape deck, 5 stack CD player, and FM radio. My mum had this pretty cool collection of records that never saw the light of day, some Carole King and Stevie Wonder, Santana and Stephen Stills, which I discovered around 15, and without fail, every Christmas when the whole family is round, my dad will set James Brown spinning and we’ll have our annual boogie round the sitting room.”
“I bought my own record player from a car boot sale for £2 ten years ago. Then I started picking up vinyl in charity shops. I don’t know why I never really went into a proper record shop, I guess they scared me a bit, and I like buying things second-hand. In fact to this day the only record I’ve ever actually bought first hand from a record store is Rowan Atkinson’s Not Just a Pretty Face, and that was not a musical choice.
I found a load of second-hand things I love; The Drifters, Dolly Parton, Tracy Chapman, soundtracks to old musical theatre shows, amazing reggae classics, and probably the coolest jazz Christmas music compilations ever made. I think the best thing I ever found though was a sleeveless beat-up recording of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The effect of hearing that on record is absolutely incredible, totally transporting, and there’s not much better in life than lying on the floor and turning it up.
At uni I fell pretty hard for a DJ who played vinyl. He used to cut together the best hip hop and funk, and I remember loitering near him at house parties watching him flicking through those heavy boxes, treating everything with great care, and then staggering home with them all afterwards. He had so much love for them it was pretty infectious.
I got separated from the record player when I moved to Spain, and it’s lost to me now, so these days I listen to vinyl round other people’s houses mostly. I’ve got my eye on a second-hand furniture store that sometimes has them in though, and when I get a new one I think I’ll start buying some newer stuff.
We had some beautiful vinyl made up of my EP ‘Waters.’ I took it home a couple of weeks ago to give to my mum and we put it on the turntable that’s as old as I am and listened to it for the first time. It was a pretty special moment.”
—Eliza Shaddad
Eliza Shaddad’s “Waters” EP is available now via Beatnik.
On vinyl.
