Denver, CO | This local wine bar will surprise you with the best brunch in Denver: In addition to its bottle and record collections, Sunday Vinyl also has a fantastic daytime food selection. Full disclosure: Even I didn’t expect this to happen. But I recently discovered Denver’s best Sunday brunch menu at a date-night bar at which you’re more likely to have stayed out late on a Saturday. And yet it’s right there in the name. With its records spinning and food and service all dialed in, Sunday Vinyl’s once-weekly brunch is the indulgent daytime affair that I find myself craving all winter. Every other day of the week, you’ll find this Union Station-side restaurant open during happy hour and dinner. But on Sundays, it also opens at 10 a.m. for brunch, followed by a four-hour afternoon snack session and an early-to-bed supper. It’s like the perfect day of eating, plus some vinyl records over a sound system that’s better than your home setup.
New York, NY | A new audiophile bar is opening in NYC: With a focus on building a music community around the space. A new audiophile bar called Eavesdrop is opening in Brooklyn, New York City, March 2022. Eavesdrop is inspired by Japanese izakaya in its food and drinks menu, and kissa music bars in its ethos. “Our mission is to bring Brooklyn’s community of listeners, artists, and curators together in a cozy neighbourhood environment that lends itself more to listening than to dancing,” explains Eavesdrop. “We believe that with the right DJ, sound system, and atmosphere, music of all kinds can be celebrated and experienced anew.” Its sound system is designed by Danny Taylor, founder of House Under Magic. Eavesdrop’s DJ booth features Technics turntables, and a MasterSounds rotary mixer. The space also features Danley Sound Lab SH60 loudspeakers and Seaton Submersive sub-woofers, with wall and ceiling acoustic treatments.
We went record shopping with Volbeat and this is what happened: Danish superstars Volbeat are on the hunt for cheap thrills as they sign up for the £50 Record Store Challenge. When Volbeat were starting out 20 years ago, frontman Michael Poulsen would go down to Copenhagen’s Sex Beat Records and give its owner, Thomas Andreassen, his band’s merchandise in the hope that the shop would stock it. “Michael would say: ‘Do you want to have our T-shirts in the shop and hand out some of our promos?’” Andreassen says today. “Demo CDs were not registered for sales, so I would put them in customers’ bags as giveaways.” Two decades on, very little has changed apart from the premises. Thomas still runs this compact, basement-level institution (named after an old Gun Club song) packed wall-to-wall with brand new shrink-wrapped vinyl and CDs. And today his old friend Michael Poulsen is leaning on the counter, perusing the vinyl LPs he’s already collected from the shelves.
UK | The UK’s 10 best indie record stores outside of London: During the pandemic, it became clear how important it is that we all support the music industry in all of its guises at the grassroots level. As Jason Rackham of PIAS said: “Independent record stores have played a key role in supporting and developing artists and their music for decades.” These local hubs are beauty spots where passion for music thrives and that will always be worth supporting. The boom of vinyl reached a record high last year with sales hitting a 30-year peak. However, what the figures don’t show is that behind that boom is a cultural movement. Record shopping is an event in itself, these hallowed spaces are a music-lovers cathedral where dusty bargains linger, life-changing finds remain one simple alluring cover away and the odd chat with an expert or fellow punter can broaden your musical horizons. While London may well lead the way when it comes to the quantity of shops on offer, gems are scattered throughout the UK.
Escape From New York Is Getting An Extra-Special Blu-Ray Box Set With A 7 Inch Vinyl Record: It looks like one of the coolest movies of all time is about to have a home video release to match. John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York” is getting a new release courtesy of Sacred Bones Records and Shout! Factory, and it features a whole host of goodies including newly recorded music from Carpenter himself. …The crème de la crème for “Escape From New York” fans, though, will be the new music and art that come with the box set. The Sacred Bones/Shout! Factory version of the movie includes a 7″ vinyl record with a red, black, and blue paint splatter design and an eye-patched Statue of Liberty at its center. The record features the film’s main theme, an epic, synth-heavy track that perfectly underscores Snake Plissken’s (Kurt Russell) race against the clock. It also includes a new recording by Carpenter and his frequent collaborators, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter. That track will be a never-before-released version of “69th Street Bridge,” which scored the climax of the film.
Darren Riley recreates iconic vinyl album covers in these expressive, folk-style paintings: Partly inspired by the works of an artist called Mingering Mike – a fictitious soul star with a whole series of illustrated album covers – Darren has brought a similar folk style, almost Outsider art aesthetic to his record sleeve paintings. And being a musician and huge music fan himself, a series of album tributes is an organic next step for his various skills. The first painting in the series was kicked off by a note Darren had made for himself on an index. It simply read: ‘Paint Errol Brown.’ And before he knew it, Darren had produced roughly fifty record sleeve paintings in his distinctive style. However, only two of them feature the Hot Chocolate frontman though. Yes, despite being a labour of love, it’s something of a surprise to learn that not every record in the series is one Darren enjoys listening to. “Indeed, there are plenty that I’ve never even heard, and there are a good few that I think are terrible covers,” he tells Creative Boom. “I tend to just pick ones that I think I can do something interesting with.
