In rotation: 7/9/19

Barnes & Noble Brings Back Popular Vinyl Weekend to Stores Nationwide, July 12 – 14: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS), the world’s largest retail bookseller, today announced the return of its customer-favorite Vinyl Weekend event taking place Friday, July 12 through Sunday, July 14 at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide and online at BN.com/Vinyl. This year, Barnes & Noble is celebrating Vinyl Weekend with a wide selection of exclusive vinyl records and incredible offers including 10% off all vinyl and 30% off Crosley turntables and accessories, plus giveaways, while supplies last, in select stores. Customers can also enter for the chance to win special prizes at select Barnes & Noble stores, while supplies last… “We are excited to share our curated selection of vinyl and encourage new and seasoned vinyl shoppers to stop by Barnes & Noble stores or shop online for our exclusive vinyl, sales on vinyl and turntables, and giveaways in select stores. It’s sure to be the ultimate vinyl lover’s experience.”

Lockport, NY | Vinny’s Vinyl Record Shop’s one of Lockport’s newest businesses: Two vinyl record fans have taken their love and turned it into a business with the opening of a local record shop. Jon Vinson and Jayson Kendzie opened the doors on Vinny’s Vinyl Record Shop, at 21 Main St., about three months ago. The store features thousands of vinyl records, CDs, eight-tracks and other memorabilia. “There was no other places around so we had a surplus of our own collections and we decided to open a small store and see what happens,” Vinson said. So far, they have done a “small bit of advertising” on social media and they plan to get their sign up soon, with it just recently being approved by the city. A grand opening is planned for mid-summer, Vinson added. He said the reception so far has been “good” and that word of mouth has been helping bring in business. Vinson said he and Kendzie would get the records “anywhere we could find them.”

Singapore, MY | Singapore record shop The Analog Vault launches vinyl-only label: Singapore record shop The Analog Vault has launched a new vinyl-only record label called TAV Records to support local artists. TAV’s first release is Fauxe’s Ikhlas EP, described as “a contemporary ode to Malaysian music” by the label. Fauxe is an experimental hip-hop and freeform artist whose work focuses on reinterpreting electronic sounds from South East Asia. According to TAV, “Ikhlas is an exploration of the Kuala Lumpur’s music scene expressed through irreverent samples from traditional Malaysian music. Inspired by an eight-month visit to Malaysia, the EP is a true modern ode to the sonic legacy of the country – covering a wide range of styles through the roots of hip-hop, disco, and breakbeat.”

Kelowna, BC | Kelowna artists create new artwork for vintage albums: Album artwork can tell the story of a collection of songs before you even hear them. Often they’re even more memorable than the tunes themselves. Who could forget the iconic artwork for classic albums like Led Zeppelin IV, Nevermind, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? A group of artists dove deep into vinyl music to reinterpret album covers and create their own works of art for an upcoming exhibition. Cool Arts Society tasked its artists with a unique challenge. They listened to dozens of vinyl records provided by Milkcrate Records and, guided by art educator Shimshon Obadia, created their own art pieces based on their interpretations of the music. The pieces will be displayed at the Kelowna Community Theatre as an art exhibit titled RE:RECORD. “My hope is that through the minutia of perspective demonstrated in our RE:RECORDs, interpreting something as broad as these well-loved songs, we can gain a greater understanding and acceptance of each others’ seemingly foreign points of view,” said Obadia in a press release.

Final Fantasy VII ditches CDs and goes vinyl for two-record music collection: Once upon a time, the Final Fantasy video game franchise was exclusive to Nintendo consoles. But after six installments of the mainline series, publisher Square Soft released Final Fantasy VII as a console exclusive for Sony’s PlayStation, and the reason for jumping ship can be summed up in one word: CDs. The PlayStation was a CD-based system, but Nintendo’s then-upcoming Nintendo 64 was sticking with old-fashioned cartridges. The Final Fantasy VII team wanted to make use of the vastly superior storage capacity of CDs in order to give them a larger canvas to work with, and they weren’t overestimating the scale of their vision, as in the end Final Fantasy VII needed three PlayStation CDs to fit everything the developers wanted in the game, which would have made it prohibitively expensive to publish in cartridge format. But despite being the definitive CD RPG of its generation, in an ironic twist the next installment in Final Fantasy VII’s musical legacy is ditching CDs in favor of a more old-fashioned media form: vinyl records.

Jason Aldean ponders a world without albums: “That just sounds like it sucks to me.” …”I couldn’t wait to go every Tuesday to the record store… and buy whatever was out,” the Georgia native recalls, “and go home and look at the liner notes…” “I just was wired like that,” he adds. “That was just my age group of people and that’s how we did it.” Jason admits he has a hard time thinking about making music without recording full albums. “I enjoy gettin’ in the studio, gettin’ in a groove, when you’re in there cutting eight songs in two days,” he explains. “And you get locked in the stuff. And I don’t know how you do that [otherwise].” “You go in every few months and cut one song?” he asks. “That just sounds like it sucks to me. That’s not the way I would like to make music. It’s not why I got into it.”

This entry was posted in A morning mix of news for the vinyl inclined. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
  • SUPPORTING YOUR LOCAL INDIE SHOPS SINCE 2007


  • Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text
  • Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text