“A dusty Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in my grandfather’s basement is my clear first memory of a vinyl. The cover had somehow retained its brilliant colour, unlike the many books and photographs surrounding it which had all faded into the same sepia tone. It felt giant and majestic and certainly the most valuable thing I could imagine being down there at the time (although looking back I now realise it was most likely his vintage recorder collection). It sounded wobbly and tinnier than the version I had on iTunes but I’m pretty sure the hi-fi hadn’t been switched on in years and I was still very impressed that any sound at all came out of this weird disk.”
“There’s been a few nice ‘band-ey’ moments I can recall sitting with the boys and some records. I doubt they’ll remember but I definitely had a lyrical revelation moment with Pat and Noah in early high school reading the words to ‘Suzanne’ while it spun slowly on the all-in-one stereo unit in Pat’s room. Then a few years ago, all of us piled in around Jules’ Berlin apartment and laughed at the silly but undeniably tight vibratos on ‘Minute by Minute’ while we talked about making our first album, each of us picturing the vinyl it would eventually be pressed on. Even when it’s in the background, music on vinyl holds a presence in the room that’s real and tangible. A polite little guy sitting in the corner, slinking around, filling the air with warm fluffy tones.
Maybe it was just me, but I feel like growing up in our country shire didn’t expose us to much vinyl outside our parents’ collections. There was one guy just called the ‘vinyl junkie’ who used to come to town maybe once a year and rent out a hall to sell off his giant collection. Maybe he was the only true vinyl junkie in Australia at the time, and he was a big deal because he imported them all on trips to the US. I remember watching a pretty dorky guy there while he dug through a crate. He had this method that looked like he was doing a doggy paddle through the stack, and he’d clear a hundred records in a minute! He only needed a half second glance at each cover to determine their value to him. The records were pretty expensive there, and I didn’t really get the hype yet.
The magic hit me when my family went on holiday to Europe for the first time and every flea market in Paris had tonnes of vinyl stalls with French Vinyl Junkies— except they weren’t weird old guys—they were cool and they had albums I already loved alongside absolute classics. They were much cheaper, nicer quality and I was so hooked. I bought every Pink Floyd album I could find, including this beautiful version of Dark Side of the Moon with a hand-written sticker on the front that said ‘rosè.’ When I opened it back at the hotel I saw the vinyl itself was pastel pink with white swirls marbled through it. Best day ever. Off the top of my head I also got Bridge Over Troubled Water, Kind of Blue, Toto IV, Crosby Stills and Nash, Give Me The Night, Faith and that was the start of my collection.
For me right now, music on vinyl and music on Spotify seem to inhabit different worlds entirely. On the screen, I scroll through lists, picking evocative names or artworks and granting the lucky ones a mere minute of my time during which they must convince me not to press skip. So many aren’t up to the challenge and suddenly I wonder if I can enjoy any music at all these days. Maybe I’ve grown into a cynic like my Dad who regularly tells me that he, despite having played his whole life, ‘hates all music.’ (He’s just released a vinyl himself actually. Check out his Australian based Russian Folk Choir, Dustyesky).
When it comes to records, the whole ritual is already refreshing before even hearing the music. In my living room I need to power up two speakers, a mixer and a turntable, each element giving its own satisfying little pop or flicker. With each record you flick past, you get a spark of memory or colour or just a vague emotion, and you need to work with what you’ve got in front of you, nothing more. You suddenly consider the stories behind them. These old jazz cats in the ’60s knocked this album out live in just a few takes at the height of their game. This unknown singer from Algeria made a track with a French disco producer in ’77 and here we are, appreciating her in our living room.
This Live album is our latest release on vinyl. It feels very genuine because we didn’t think about it too much. We set up in a studio and played through all the songs in the form they were in after nearly two years of touring. Recently, getting deeper on vinyl digging has led me to an appreciation of getting to experience these tiny snapshots of moments in a musician or a producer’s life and it’s so cool that our two days in a studio in Berlin can now join the sea of moments in some vinyl junkie’s warehouse. Maybe it will be found in years to come, long after our last download on iTunes. Maybe it’ll be forgotten, that’s cool too. Enjoy!”
—Louie Swain
Parcels’ Live Vol. 1 2LP set arrives in stores today, June 19, 2020—on vinyl.
Enter to win a copy of the LP by simply citing in the comments below the first record you recall laying eyes upon. We’ll choose three winners—each with eye-opening origin stories—for a copy of the LP one week from today, Friday, June 26, 2020. Our winners will be notified directly via email.
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PHOTO: JEAN RACLET
