Kiko King, The TVD First Date

“Now, I know that the world is going back to wanting to listen to music on vinyl records. The trend is growing every year. It’s so much better for the soul.”

“By the time I started consuming music it was already on CDs. The hype said that CDs were great, but the sound was never as warm and dreamy as what I heard on my parents’ old records. Now, the mp3 has taken over and even more of the soul is taken out or lost. All that music, all those frequencies, which we carefully put into our music, is missing when I listen to it on my smartphone mp3 player.

It’s sad even though I know that more options are coming down the road as chip storage gets cheaper and smaller. One of the heads of my label in Berlin is a big Howard Stern fan and he just played me a long interview with Neil Young who was someone I listened to on my parents’ records back then.

Neil has been promoting the Pono device that he helped develop, which allows the listener to have the same depth of musical experience as with vinyl. He spoke about it with such heart and enthusiasm. I look forward to being able to consume music the same as I do with mp3s but with the complete feeling.

However, there is one experience which one cannot replicate ever again, an experience which is not downloadable; and the experience is the one you get sifting through giant discs in cardboard—pieces of true artwork in your parents’ old collections and in record stores. I find myself handling each record with care and love. I have to protect these pieces of musical posterity.

Here in Kreuzberg and Neukoelln, Berlin, record shops are popping up all over the place and I love the idea that people get back to taking a break from their restless lives to spend time on activities like listening to their records. It is a tranquil, almost ritual process to put your vinyl on your record player, to sit back and listen to the music, and to really focus on what you are listening to.”
—creativemaze