Paris, FR | The definitive guide to Paris’ best record shops: As one of the most-visited tourist destinations in the world, Paris often labours under the weight of expectation as “the city of light”, but scratch the surface even slightly and there is a huge amount to discover, not least a fresh and exciting musical scene. While the bulk of visitors come for the museums, the architecture or the food, densely packed micro-areas that have precious little in common with the Latin Quarter or the Champs Elysées often provide a complete change of atmosphere in just a few blocks. Home to many disparate underground musics, from revolutionary jazz and psychedelic rock to a thriving house and techno scene- not forgetting its historic role as a production hub for large swathes of French-speaking African countries, the city’s musical DNA is reflected in its numerous record shops.
Alton, IL | SCORE! New record store opens in Alton, vinyl fans rejoice: Score Records opened Tuesday at 210 Market Street in Alton to a tremendous reception. Owner, Becca Peterson, originally of Jerseyville, said she believed a record store would be a good fit in the city. According to the attendance she received Tuesday and Wednesday, Peterson was correct. The small shop currently has an expansive selection of mostly rock and alternative vinyl pressings from across time. People wanting to listen to the obscure (and amazing) new album by indie rockers Turnover can feel right at home with 90s basement dads spinning Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth as well as old school rockers seeking Led Zeppelin and Metallica and even punk rockers seeking their Descendants and Minutemen fixes.
London, UK | TV editor switches to record shop role: Kieran Smyth reveals the story behind Let It Roll, a new record shop in Kentish Town: It sounds like a music lover’s dream: quit a high-flying job in TV to pursue your dream of surrounding yourself with vinyl. And for Kieran Smyth, it has become a reality, as the former editor opened the doors to his new Kentish Town record store this week. Kieran, who lives in Kentish Town, has had a 30-year career as an editor in documentary TV but decided to pack in his job to open Let It Roll, a new record shop selling a wide range of genres. He said: “I thought, I don’t want to have spent my entire working life doing a job in TV. I wanted a new challenge, I love music, so why not a record store? I just love the idea of a vinyl store for people to come in, have a browse and chill out here.”
Analog surround-sound is reborn on a new quadraphonic LP: …LIVE Quadraphonic, out Monday, June 4, comes as a box set. In the box, you get a 180-gram vinyl pressing of Suzanne Ciani’s 30-minute live electronic music performance. You also get a hardware decoder that lets you listen to the record on four speakers. It’s a simple, raw circuit board with two inputs and four outputs. You plug in the stereo outputs from your turntable, then connect the board to four powered speakers and place them around you, putting one in each corner of the listening environment. This quad decoder, custom built by the Australian high-end audio company Involve Audio, sends the appropriate signal to each of your four speakers, lending a more defined sense of space to the music.
The Most Valuable Vinyl Records on Earth: As more and more listeners embrace the vinyl resurgence, vinyl fans around the world are increasingly on the hunt for the coolest wax to spin on their newly acquired analog hi-fis. We would all love to find that hidden first pressing of Sgt. Peppers at the local record shop. But the rarest, most expensive vinyl records in the world aren’t for playing — unless you’re just that baller. Worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, the world’s most sought-after records aren’t just antiques or even works of art, they’re tangible time stamps of rock ‘n roll history, each with its own story to tell.
