Port Coquitlam, BC | Pinball Alley’s new owners bringing on the weird: The City of the Arts is about to get weird. That means instead of floral watercolours to hang on the wall, expect the inky punk stylings of I, Braineater…Penny Ball and Kaine Delay have a background in pinup and punk and they think the city’s ready for their vibe. The couple are longtime friends of Pinball Alley’s owners, Heather Wallace and Johnny Barnes, who are upping stakes to chase their lifestyle dreams in Spain. Ball said when she learned the St. Johns Street shop — which has become a destination for audiophiles looking to fill out their vinyl record collections and lovers of mid-century kitsch and knick-knacks — was for sale, she didn’t hesitate. She said after 27 years working for others in retail, she was ready to strike out on her own. Delay, a veteran musician with the Vancouver punk-metal-electronica band Left Spine Down, was on board as well.
Asheville, NC | New vinyl pressing plant will be an immersive food, music and cocktail experience: “Synergy” is a word that comes to Gar Ragland’s mind often as he talks about his proposed project, tentatively named AVL-Vinyl. Ragland, a North Carolina-born music producer, president and CEO of NewSong music, and the Board Chair of the Asheville Area Arts Council, plans to build a vinyl pressing plant in the Asheville Citizen Times building, taking over nearly 10,000 square feet of the ground floor. The Asheville Citizen Times newspaper staff moved back to the second floor of the historic building this week. “We aspire to be one of the country’s leading manufacturers of high-quality vinyl,” Ragland said. “And as we started to put that model together, we realized that Asheville offers a special, unique opportunity, driven by both the homegrown love of music and craft here — as well as the 12 million tourists who come here seeking that here in our town.”
Sacramento, CA | Dimple Records closing after 45 years in Sacramento. The local chain of independent record stores is closing its seven locations. The owners’ son says his parents are looking to retire. Dimple Records is closing the doors on all seven of its locations later in 2019. Andrew Radakovitz is son of co-founders John and Dilyn Radakovitz, who opened Dimple Records in 1974. He reached out to ABC10 to share the news Tuesday evening. “My mom and dad have been doing this for years. Decades,” he said. “It’s basically a retirement sale. They’re both in their mid-70s.” The Greater Sacramento Area chain of independent record stores sells music, movies, collectibles and more. Radakovitz said business has been negatively impacted in recent years by a number of factors, including “some difficulties in regulations, minimum wage.” The liquidation sale starts Wednesday and will last through the summer. While the couple is open to finding the right person to give Dimple Records a second life, Radakovitz said there’s currently no successor in place after a potential buyer fell through.
Record Store Day Thinks the World Needs a 3-Inch Single of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”: Record Store Day proper has come and gone this year, but that’s not stopping organizers from releasing more of those “exclusives.” In fact, RSD has decided the world is not complete without a 3-inch vinyl version of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” so that’s exactly what it’s going to get. RSD is marking the 25th anniversary of Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication with a 3-inch vinyl single of the group’s 1994 hit “Sabotage” — because normal vinyl, CDs, tapes and even streaming apparently no longer cut it anymore these days. If you’re a big 3-inch fiend, the single will be released in indie record shops on July 19. It is meant to be played on the RSD3 mini-turntable, and the “Sabotage” single comes in an outer box that reproduces the original 7-inch single (that’s four inches larger for those keeping track) sleeve art and includes a pull-out Ill Communication poster. RSD will press up 2,500 copies of the single. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s an appropriate number for this “limited” pressing.
Stranger Things 3 soundtrack to be released on vinyl: A doo-wop turn in the upside down. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s soundtrack to the third series of retro sci-fi romp Stranger Things is to be released on vinyl, via Lakeshore and Invada Records. Members of the synth-power-pop outfit S U R V I V E, Dixon and Stein have previously drawn heavily on ’80s b-movie soundtrack motifs for the show’s score. However, according to the press release, season 3 will step away from familiar territory, in favour of “the pop sensibilities and melancholic undertones of ’50s doo wop.” As the duo explain, “With the season 3 soundtrack, we’ve made an album that doesn’t feel like a “score” necessarily, but one that feels more like a stand-alone record than a collection of brief cues. We’ve incorporated the main narrative elements of the series and stayed true to the original sound while at the same time expanding on our musical palette — we often pushed it to the limit.”
Del Rey, CA | ‘A record store for bands that don’t exist’: Do you remember the viral anthems of Rainbow Vulture? The head-banging concerts of Incendiary Android? The introspective ballads of Misunderstood Clementine? To be fair, those are trick questions. None of these bands actually exist — except in the world of Rohit Records, the brainchild of Santa Monica artist, illustrator, art director and commercial director Rohitash Rao. Born out of an art show and concert hosted by Google’s Venice campus about a year ago (with some inspiration from an animated short Rao created years ago called “Battle of the Album Covers”), Rohit Records has evolved from a collection of over 150 album covers made for “bands that don’t exist” into a faux record store and music label that’s set up shop at conferences, festivals, galleries and even a real L.A. record store. The “label” has even grown into producing songs, music videos, T-shirts and its own vinyl record filled with singles by a few of its 
New Plymouth, NZ | Renovations uncover teenage 1960s time capsule in New Plymouth: A time capsule of a typical 1960s teenager’s pop culture crushes has been uncovered by a Taranaki teacher during house renovations. Katey Pittwood picked up the keys to her 1901 wood and corrugated iron cottage in Lemon St, New Plymouth, on Friday afternoon and immediately got to work with partner Steven Rollo. “I owned a house next door, sold it, and bought this one, and so I knew all the ceilings were hidden,” the mother-of-two said. They decided to work on a small room which they plan to make into a bedroom for Pittwood’s two young children. “It was completely gibbed,” she said. “The walls and ceiling were completely covered in gib, like a normal bedroom, but I knew, because I lived next door, that there were beautiful wooden ceilings. “I got the keys on Friday at three o’clock, and I marched in, got the crowbar and said, ‘Just pull down a little bit. Have a look.’ And 
NEW RELEASE PICKS: Kongo Dia Ntotila, 360° (Pussyfoot) BBC DJ and noted rocker Tom Robinson has praised this Kongo-Jazz group as being “…as good as anything you get coming out of Africa…” Absorbing their second LP, it’s easy to understand his (and others) enthusiasm, and by the finale, I’m won over myself. However, it should be noted that Kongo Dia Ntotila have honed their thing to an audience-thrilling precision; this is music custom-built for outdoor shows in the sunshine. That they have done this without weakening the music’s power by becoming too calculated (or too “tight”) is borderline remarkable. Instead, there are a series of instrumental surprises, like the deft guitars in “Mbongo” and the free jazz horn flirtations in the title track. Miraculously, this baby finishes the trip with a full tank. A
SPAZA, S/T (Mushroom Hour Half Hour) SPAZA is a band with no fixed personnel brought together by the label. As their first release, it features a half-dozen musicians (for the closing track “Stametta Spuit: Invocations,” seven) from Johannesburg, South Africa. The band’s name derives from the makeshift neighborhood stores common to the region, and also from the gallery where this album was recorded live in one take, with the music completely improvised. If the circumstances of creation insinuate a lack of focus, wipe those notions away right quick. Rhythm is a constant, though the record is as vocally driven (often with contempo enhancements) as it is groove-based. Additionally, synths, electronics, and FX blend with upright bass, trombone and electric violin (again, with FX). Altogether, this is a stunner. A
REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICKS: V/A, Jambú e Os Míticos Sons Da Amazônia (Analog Africa) Loaded with inventively rhythmic selections from Northern Brazil in the ’70s and the city of Belém in particular, this offers two LPs worth of goodness unlikely to have been previously heard by all but the most diligent of sound excavators. A big reason for the success here derives from variety thwarting monotony, which is a credit to compilers Samy Ben Redjeb and Carlos Xavier but is more deeply linked to Belém’s reality as a port city; as people of assorted nationalities arrived, they brought the sounds of their home regions with them (this is the nature of the port situation; think New Orleans), which then combined with Belém’s already considerable diversity. Of the 19 tracks, not a single one disappoints. That’s impressive. A
Band Apart, S/T (Crammed Discs) For those looking to procure as much No Wave and scene-adjacent material as possible, this reissue is a must, and the quality is consistently high that pickier consumers with an interest in the style should also give it some serious consideration. It features the entirety of this Franco-American duo’s debut 1983 EP and five tracks from the follow-up full-length (on the vinyl; the CD and digital offer two additional tracks). What NYC poet and performance artist Jayne Bliss and Marseille-based musician and producer M Mader came up with was very much of its time, but it has aged surprisingly well, which is no small feat given how they lean toward the sophisto (rather than the disruptive) end of the subterranean ’80s spectrum. Originally issued on Crammed, and so it remains. A-
Ames, IA | The man behind the music: how the Vinyl Cafe became more than a coffee and record shop: The aroma of fresh coffee beans pours out a single window. A white door hangs wide open, welcoming the next person that takes the six steps down to the Vinyl Cafe. Blake Delaney is sitting on the stool that is typically occupied by a customer chatting him up. A regular named Matt steps inside the basement shop. Delaney sings to the customer and hugs him before taking his reusable cup and making him a pour over coffee. As the caffeinated beverage is dripping, he’s picking on a small plastic-stringed ukulele marked with a black “B” sticker that he keeps behind the counter. “Sara Smile” by Daryl Hall & John Oates plays in the background. As a middle schooler, Delaney was required to journal in school. He grew up in Arizona and then moved to Colorado. He was outdoors a lot, doing things like fishing, golfing and hiking. But also, he would journal about his dream of opening a record store. 
Sacramento, CA | Dimple Records to close after 45 years in Sacramento area: A family-run, Sacramento-area record store is closing its doors. Dimple Records is going out of business, spokesperson Andrew Radakovitz said Tuesday. Liquidation sales begin Wednesday, but there is no firm closing date. Radakovitz said it could take months for all the inventory to sell. Dimple was founded by John and Dilyn Radakovitz in 1974 and has remained in the family. Their son, Andrew Radakovitz, said his parents are retiring. He also said declining sales, particularly the decrease of DVD sales, are among the reasons Dimple is closing. Andrew Radakovitz said 
