vinyl

Over on the Audiophiliac blog, Steve Guttenberg is polling readers about how they get their music. Here are my answers to his questions.

Do you buy CDs, LPs, MP3s, iTunes, or 8 track cartridges? I purchase about 80% of my music on LP. For a few years in the early 1990s it was almost impossible to find new vinyl, but now it's reasonably common, especially for indie rock, electronic music, and hip hop. (Classical? Not so much. Jazz? Only re-releases.) In fact, vinyl availability sometimes convinces me to buy a record I otherwise might have skipped--Of Montreal'sGladiator Nightstick Collection … Read more

UPDATE: I just heard the sad news that Future Legend will be closing its doors later this month. I have personally bought more than 200 CDs over the years from that little shop, but now I'll have to go elsewhere for my weekly fix. If you're in NYC drop by and pick up bargains, starting today, 2/6/08, Future Legend will begin selling all merchandise at 50% off the sticker price.

I want to tell you about my favorite record store, Future Legend. I drop in every week to see what's new, and talk about music … Read more

The electro punk renegade Peaches teams up with '80s pop-rap icon Tone-Loc on a grindy, rump-shaking 'Wild Thing' remix. Tone-Loc's gruff voice is a good match with Peaches smoothly-delivered naughtiness. Get your free download right here, thanks to our friends over at Delicious Vinyl.

Tone-Loc: "Wild Thing" (Peaches remix)

The 2008 NAMM expo (National Association of Music Merchants) kicks off today in Anaheim, Calif., and with it comes a treasure trove of slick digital DJ gear. The first cool announcement to hit my in-box has to be the SC series, Stanton's latest take on the laptop DJ interface.

At first glance, the SC setup looks like a traditional analog turntable and mixing board, but in reality it's an all-digital system (look, Ma--no tonearm!) that makes DJing from your laptop a much more physical and engaging experience. The Stanton SC rig comes in two parts: the SCS.1d virtual turntable ($1,499); and the SCS.1m virtual mixer ($999). Both parts of the system are each rad in their own right, so here's the breakdown on features (with photos).… Read more

Audiophiles never gave up on vinyl, but now kids are driving a current LP boom.

Kristina Dell's feature article in Time magazine looks at the trend of people, including teens, turning to vinyl to escape the awful digital grime of downloads and MP3s.

"Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl," one teen says. Another teenage vinyl devotee tells Time, "Most things sound better on vinyl, even with the crackles and pops and hisses."

And when you figure that LPs usually cost a little more … Read more

Natural sound as we hear it in "real life" is pure analog, but recorded sound is, with few exceptions, chopped up into digital bits. So other than live music concerts pretty much every note you hear is digital. Whether you're listening to an iPod, the internet, TV, CDs, DVDs, or the radio, they're all digital in one way or another. We have as a species evolved over the eons to hear analog sound, and it's only over the past 25 years that digital has taken over. And it hasn't been very pretty. The only … Read more

I recently had the opportunity to conduct this interview with Jeff Owens, Label Manager for the Ghostly International record label. To give you some context, Ghostly International is an independent electronic music label based out of Ann Arbor, MI. They've been releasing music since 1999, and their latest release, Matthew Dear's Asa Breed has been drawing praise from tastemakers such as Pitchfork and Filter.

From my perspective, Ghostly is a unique example of an independent record label that is quickly adapting to today's bizarre and demanding music marketplace. Their music can be found everywhere from iTunes, to Borders, to MySpace. Ghostly also interests me because they are a rare combination of a cutting-edge music label that is still heavily invested in releasing their music on vinyl. In fact, their Spectral Sound sublabel has the distinction of selling the majority of their music in either vinyl or MP3 formats, with just a handful of releases on CD.

It's amazing to me that in the past thirty years we've seen the dramatic rise and fall of music formats like cassette tape… Read more

Wow. When we first saw this photo on Akihabara News, it felt as if we'd fallen into a time machine. This system looks exactly like a Panasonic stereo we had in 1985.

Yet the "Faltima 010" is indeed a new product, though it does have a distinctly retro-looking built-in turntable on top of the stack. But unlike the all-in-one compact units of the past, this one is self-contained to make it easier to convert tunes from vinyl to CDs, MP3s or pretty much any digital format you wish. (Sorry, there's no 8-track slot so far as … Read more

Gelaskins may offer vinyl to dress up your iPods, but what about your gaming devices?

It seems like Colorforms, while in a different form, are back for our generation. Only this time, instead of applying them to a stick-it board or fridge, you use them to adorn your high-tech toys.

iStyles offers art and patterned vinyl skins for stylizing your Wii, Apple TV, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, iPod and portable gaming devices.

Prices range from $5 for a Wii nunchuk/remote skin set to $6 for an iPod nano skin to $25 to cover your entire Xbox.

The iStyles come … Read more