“Growing up, my father kept a collection of over thirty-thousand vinyl records in our house. I used to trip on stacks of them on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”
“He’d stay awake until sunrise listening to his records at concert volume, and for most of my life at home, I’d listen to the walls tremble as I’d fall asleep in the room next door. Wagner, Nevsky, Hermann Goetz, all of it was classical, and when I discovered rock n’ roll, I began collecting records myself.
I was in my early twenties when I used to host a party at my Echo Park home appositely titled “Ecstasy Thursdays.” On these nights, everyone would pile onto our gold velour sectional sofa and listen to albums. The physicality of the record itself. The black carnal frozen liquid spinning. The needle and hair stretched across a circle became a conduit to another time. The lecherous winding of sound. This is how I remember listening to my favorite vinyl records.
We often take for granted the record making process. Vinyl is physical. If pure, it won’t have ever touched a computer. The oil, lacquer, machinery, and ingenuity that exists solely to deliver an artist’s original intent is something rare in our modern society.
Vinyl is an emblem and reminder of purpose. As we plunge further into this digital landscape in which human beings need everything NOW, I’m confident generations to come will continue to find solace in the medium of vinyl, a format in which early music was recorded.”
—Robert Francis
Robert Francis’ fourth full-length release, Heaven landed on store shelves this week, June 3, via Aeronaut Records.
