Black plastic please

I went shopping for vinyl yesterday.

It's surprising how much stuff is available on the old format, rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated. By the time I left Virgin eight years ago, vinyl was pretty much stiff in terms of LPs, but 12 singles were going strong and were hailed as being the 'saviour of vinyl'. In the meantime, 7 inch singles have become trendy, and various reissue lables like Simply Vinyl have sprung up to cater for what seems to be quite a healthy market in classic LPs on ye olde black plastic. Added to which, plenty of new releases are given a run in the LP format, eg the Arctic Monkeys. And it's not your imagination or wishful thinking - vinyl sounds better. Certainly miles better than mp3 - the sound quality of Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' download was shoddy (hard to gripe though, I only paid £1 after all...).












Walking upstairs in Selectadisc, you are surrounded by racks of vinyl of every category, new and secondhand. I had a nose through the new release section and picked out the new Burial album and the new Iron & Wine ('Carousel' is a definite track of the year). On Ady's advice I sought out Aphex Twin's 'Selected Ambient Works', which is deleted on CD but happily available in remastered form on double LP.

It felt absurdly good to leave the shop with a weighty 12 inch size carrier bag in my hand...the magic of picture inner sleeves, lyric sheets, textured covers etc all came back- LPs ar just so much more satisfying in every way, and I feel a bit of a twat for sticking to CDs for so long when I have a perfectly serviceable turntable gathering dust, and a shop like Selectadisc on my doorstep.