Servicing Sydney, Australia, with the finest in vinyl treats since the early-2000s, RecordStore is one of the few survivors of the area’s deep dance music culture heyday, which at one point saw no less than 14 record stores in a 1-square-kilometer area. Owner Stephan Gyory has been pushing vinyl since the early ’90s (first working […]
My parents had the coolest stereo set up in our living room when I was growing up. Two huge hi-fi speakers, an amp, a receiver, a turntable with an arm that allowed you to stack about five records so a new LP could drop down as the one before another ended. The pièce de resistance […]
On the cusp of the new millennium, at Electric Lady Studios, three of the brightest lights in modern R&B made their masterpieces simultaneously. D’Angelo conjured Voodoo in Studio A. In Studio B, Common concocted Like Water for Chocolate. Erykah Badu polished up Mama’s Gun in Studio C. The common thread between these three artists? They […]
When it comes to learning the mechanics of bebop, there’s no more monumental tome than the Charlie Parker Omnibook, which Jamey Aebersold and Ken Slone compiled in 1978. One educator described this 60-page landmark in Charlier Parker transcription as “the Bible for anyone serious about learning improvisation.” However, given its subject, the Omnibook isn’t for […]
In looking at what made this year’s list of the most popular reissues on Discogs against my own list of the best archival titles of 2020, there are several things that need to be considered, the first one of which is how vinyl is purchased these days. I’ve been collecting records since the eighth grade. […]
Several times a month, a familiar question pops up on a Discogs forum: “So, I finally bought a turntable and I have this killer home theater receiver but when I plug the turntable into the back I can barely hear anything. Is my brand new turntable broken?!?!?” Or: “Hey, I got my dad’s old speakers […]
As hard rock legends AC/DC have proven with their latest album, Power Up, solid (and vintage) rock ‘n’ roll never goes out of style, especially when it comes from a true original. Of course, not everyone keeps up with the new albums by their musical heroes. Many fans prefer to listen to the classic stuff […]
Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor belongs to an unusual breed in rock music: the kit player who also sings. It’s not an approach that came naturally at first. Rather, it manifested itself out of expressive necessity for songwriting and led to real contributions. Whenever Dailor had vocal ideas for Mastodon songs, he would go in and […]
I started the year in January getting a basal cell carcinoma about the size of a quarter hacked off my nose. The doctor let me listen to Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda in the operating room, so it was appropriately chill. After two days of getting sliced and sewn back together (and using the doctor-mandated […]
Important artists die all the time. That’s the unwritten contract we sign as fans of music: Someday, the person that made that song or album that meant so much to us will no longer be walking this planet. Most years, we can accept that bargain. But in 2020, a 12-month stretch that has felt like […]
