“DJing was my thing; I was the only one I knew at my high school with a heavy obsession for vinyl. I graduated in 2007 when iPods were still new and expensive, streaming hadn’t happened yet, and burning CDs was weirdly a little bit controversial.”
“For my 14th birthday my parents were awesome and bought me a DJ-in-a-box set of belt drive Stanton turntables and DJ mixer. I had no idea how they worked, how to DJ, or which speakers I needed to make them work. My amazing parents brought me to the local record store every few weeks, the owner would spin whatever new records he was feelin and I learned to DJ by watching him. I bought my first drum and bass records there, like Shy Fx, LTJ Bukem, and Dieselboy.
Eventually I moved on to ordering most of my records from the UK. I would literally plan an entire DJ mix ahead of time while I waited for the records to be delivered. I grew up playing instruments in school, but I wasn’t really into music until I found electronic music. Every weekend I brought my crate of records with me where I went. I was living on the tail-end of the ’90s rave scene. I even think my senior quote in the yearbook is ‘the party ain’t over til’ the last record spins.’
I still own all of those records, they sit in hard cases in my old bedroom with fliers from mid 2000s raves. Now I buy albums of my favorite current music. I think my most recent purchases were the new Tribe record, Solange, Deerhoof’s La Isla Bonita, Arca’s Xen, and Tim Hecker’s Piano Drop. We’re pressing our EP to vinyl too. There’s something about owning a physical copy of music that you can’t get with streaming.
—Elliot Glasser
“My first experience of vinyl was when I was about 14. My Dad had collected all of these records and they were kind of neatly packed away in bins in a very crowded shed. I remember I was looking for something out there and I just sort of happened upon them. They were so foreign to me because I grew up with CDs and we never had a record player in our house.”
“I grew up listening to my Dad’s music for most of my childhood and teenage years. Some of my favorite artists were Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Mary Wells, The Beatles, and The Supremes. Doesn’t sound crazy now, but I remember getting so much shit for not listening to KIIS FM and not knowing any of the bands my friends listened to.”
“Even though we didn’t have a record player, I felt like it was almost criminal to leave the records there. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but I loved the way they looked and I loved the artwork on almost all of them. I decided I was going to hang them all over the walls of my room. By the time I finished hanging them I basically had vinyl wallpaper. I loved looking at them so much.
The first record I ever listened to was Joni Mitchell’s Cloud. I remember feeling like I knew exactly how my Dad felt when he first listened to this album in the late ’60s. After that I just sort of fell in love with vinyl and the ritual of playing a record. When it came time for FYOHNA to decide how we wanted to share our music, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to make vinyl.
I love the idea of our record sitting on the shelf with all the records I have collected over the years, and I love the idea of our record being a part of someone else’s collection even more.”
—Katarina Gleicher
FYOHNA’s self titled EP arrives in stores April 28, 2017. On vinyl.
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