“I have always been a vinyl fan since I was a small child, except for a small act of wanton destruction when at the age of 4. I apparently drew all over my stepfather’s vintage Grateful Dead collection which makes me cringe thinking about it. I sincerely hope that my future children do not do the same to me. Happily, the surviving records acted as a soundtrack throughout my childhood and I was always intrigued by the colourful sleeves that I wasn’t allowed to touch.”
“Later in life I discovered the joy of vinyl myself. I love the ritual of removing the record from its sleeve and the smell, particularly when it is new. I like watching the deck spin up and enjoy the crackle before the music starts.
It feels so far removed from the modern-day accessibility of endless Spotify and Soundcloud playlists where music can be very much a background experience to be passively enjoyed whilst doing other things. Vinyl is an active experience where you have to stay involved in listening because, if you are lucky enough to keep control of the record deck, you have to be ready to change to the next record.
Though I do love the sound, I can’t chime in on the sound fidelity—vinyl vs CD issue—as my favourite format in this respect is the cassette tapes of my youth which are particularly suited to Nirvana albums. Vinyl for me is very much about the experience of listening, it forces the listener to engage physically with the music. It is also finite so it is not possible to jump between songs as much as is possible online which makes it more likely that you will listen to that pesky b-side.
I still actually have my first record—the Ghostbusters soundtrack by Ray Parker Junior. It lives at my Mum’s house in Montana for safe keeping along with the original pressing of Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols that she handed down to me. They are the first in a long list of random records that I have possessed throughout the years. These records are spread out in some of my friends collections as I am too nomadic and never manage to look after my stuff. I am quite fickle so the act of discovery is very much a big thing for me. When I was a student I used to regularly visit the Oxfam record shop in Ealing (London), which had an amazingly random collection. I found Switched on Bach in there once—what a great record that is—the first recording of a moog synthesizer apparently. Another time I found a 12 record set of traditional British folk music, I spent a lot of time listening to that.
My buddy Wolfgang Klang (Mike Snell) taught me to mix drum and bass during this time. Many late nights were spent trying to beat match liquid Drum and Bass tunes with old funk and Motown. I never made it anywhere near his standard but I loved every minute of it and learned to wear headphones in the correct DJ posture to at least look the part. One night we hit the jackpot and found a pile of abandoned 7 inch records in an upstairs cupboard. None had sleeves so we set up an assembly line to create paper ones ourselves. It took us 4 days to listen to and wrap every one.
I made a massive discovery in that pile—”Army Dreamers” by Kate Bush—I was absolutely amazed by this song. I’d never heard anything like it and I must have listened to it 20 times in a row. It started a lifelong love of her music. It wasn’t the only ground breaking moment for me though, near the end of the pile we noticed an insignificant blank record that we had ignored up to that point. On closer inspection we saw Factory Records written on the side and I’ll never forget the moment when that song kicked in and I heard “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division for the first time—magical!
Recently we have been collaborating with experimental sound artist Tom Richards—he uses test tones played from a record as a generative source to feed his own modules for his compositions. He uses the speed of the records as a part of his performance which adds a great physical aspect to what he does. I have always felt that the ability to pitch shift at a whim is such a great device sonically and so simple conceptually, yet it is so poorly implemented in digital solutions such as CDJs and Serrato—I’m sure that might be heretical to a lot of people but nothing I have tried quite had the same feel as a Technics 1210, though I am only a layman and not really qualified to judge.
We are looking into a 7″ pressing for our next single. We did CDs on our current single “Silhouette” and funny enough it almost seems that more people have record decks than CD players now that laptops come without CD drives. It is very sad to see record shops closing everywhere, but it is great to see the great bastions surviving such as Sister Rays on Berwick Street (London). Despite all this I have a sneaking feeling that vinyl will stick around for another hundred years because it fulfils a physical role that other formats just can’t conquer—long live the black stuff!”
—Sam Swift-Glasman
Springh’s debut single, “Silhouette” is available now via Springh Song.
