“Somewhere in the discussion of vinyl media, there’s a roomy reverence for the physical space that records occupy. I’ve seen overstuffed bookcases in city apartments spilling over into tape-bandaged shipping boxes wedged between sofas and end tables. Or half a suburban garage devoted to a record collection and its associated memorabilia. Numerous or few, these albums are our personal effects, and decisions must be made about the actual space we wish to accord them in our lives.”
“As a boy growing up in a conductor’s household, I found the space granted to these objects to be significant. Whole walls of my father’s study were lined with vinyl records, stacked vertically, crammed densely, and held in place by the opposing cinder blocks of makeshift shelving.
In officious contrast to their pedestrian setting, each disc was distinguished by a serial number on the upper left-hand corner of its jacket, and all were kept (more or less) in numerical order. Information about each recording was kept on a Rolodex, close-at-hand; these were reference materials, kept to aid in the study of musical scores.
Or so they were to my father. To me, they were a labyrinth, both physically and imaginatively. In my early youth, a spin of Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony was an irresistible reward for a job well done. I would huddle down and shuttle through the record stacks during the arpeggiated build of the second movement, and spring forth at the moment of musical “surprise”—a forever memory, tied as it was to the sound, the space, and my very being’s reaction and interaction with each.
Later, unsupervised, I made my own discoveries. Nighttimes, I would wander downstairs, consult the Rolodex, and thumb through the variegated cardstock until I found the album I was looking for that evening. After the search came the familiar routine—the careful removal of record and sleeve from jacket, and then of record from sleeve; the setting down with both hands of the record on the turntable; the turntable’s spin; the needle’s contact; the scratch, the multi-dimensional crackle, the music.
With a vinyl record, there’s no eschewing this dance—it’s a necessity of this particular form of musical interaction. We seek out a sound, we locate a record, and we handle with care. Likewise, we allocate to this medium a defined physical space. We commit, or perhaps over-commit, square-footage, in order to keep a far-reaching experience improbably close-at-hand.
And what is the experience that vinyl affords us? In a word, connection. The vinyl album is not simply an artifact of sound recording technology, enshrined within an aesthetic of nostalgia. It’s an instrument of active ritual. And in such a relationship with it do we continue to justify, affirm, and celebrate its existence. In our own space, on our own time, we reach for the thing that demands of us a deeper communion with music, and our engagement with its inescapably physical aspect in turn brings us closer to its undeniably emotional possibility.”
—Thomas Shaw
Mount Pressmore’s debut release, Enjoy lands on store shelves today (12/3) via their own imprint, Pressmore Records.
