Hit the decks
Toss the MP3 player and turn your living room into a sonorific salon with the following hardware.
An iPod and a Bose speaker really shouldn’t be the sole music source at home. We suggest you save it for the commute or the long-haul. Enthusiasts know that vinyl is the only true musical medium and investing in an analogue outfit will raise the bars. As turntables go they don’t come much better than the British Linn Sondek LP12 designed in 1972 and hardly touched since. To extract the most audio information from the grooves, a Japanese Koetsu stylus is key. French-designed and Swiss-engineered Mimetism 15.2 is the ideal amp and to project the best sound we recommend a pair of Sonus Faber Cremona speakers that hail from Vicenza in northern Italy. To keep the neighbours sweet, invest in a pair of Denon AH-D5000 headphones.
Five soundtracks you should have on vinyl
1.
Stevie Wonder
Music of my Mind (pictured below, right)
2.
Miles Davis
Quintet, Miles Smiles
3.
Mulatu Astatke
Ethiopian Airlines
Going to Great Lengths to Please
4.
George Freeman
Franticdiagnosis
5.
Quincy Jones
The Score for They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
Record shops
Waterloo Records
600A North Lamar, Austin
Good for shoulder-rubbing with the coolest Lone Stars.
waterloorecords.com
Rough Trade East
91 Brick Lane, London
The venerable vinyl lover’s David Adjaye-designed eastern outpost.
roughtrade.com
Amoeba
6400 Sunset Blvd, LA
Just walking into the store is like walking into a great gig.
amoeba.com
Red Eye Records
66 King Street, Sydney
Red Eye’s two shops and in-store gigs cater for rarity-seekers and talent-spotters.
redeye.com.au
