Pretty good winter days lately. One early morning I decided to first take a long walk around Seurasaari (an island in Helsinki) instead of opening my work laptop on my remote day. Felt good on a clear day, I should do this more often.
An early morning walk around Seurasaari was a nice change to my morning routine.
The desire to buy an album
I did something else too I haven’t done in a long while. In my previous post I wrote about resisting temptation of buying new vinyls and it took only one day when I found myself carrying a new vinyl home. What happened?
Once again I was listening to Suede’s new album Autofiction and the thought crossed my mind again should I buy the album. So after work I went to a local record store, wondering why am I giving in.
At the record store there were two copies of it: the standard black vinyl and a grey coloured “indie limited” (meant to be only sold at local record stores). I ended up buying the grey version, reasoning to myself that it might have better resell value (highly unlikely). The album cost 35 euros, easily one of the most expensive vinyls I’ve bought.
I didn’t dare to crack it open until the next day, though. That is the moment I find out is the mastering for vinyl a good one and how is the pressing quality.
As I expected, the sound was a bit disappointing. I don’t know what is the x-factor with vinyl that makes some sound great and others not, but this sounded a bit cramped. Of course, given that the album sounds gigantic in digital format might have been a hard task to fit into a much more limited analog format and I just got too familiar with the digital version.
It didn’t make me change my opinion on the music itself (it shouldn’t be judged on sound quality), but reminded me of the reality of vinyl. But more importantly, what was it exactly I was after by buying the record? Obviously not for superior sound or the possibility to listen to it, as music these days is just a click away. A few things spring into my mind.
First, it was a gesture of approving the music itself. Second, having the album serves as a bookmark for all the memories related to it. Third, satisfying the primitive hunter-gatherer instinct of finding something valuable and scarce (in my mind that is). Fourth is the magic ceremony of setting up the vinyl to reproduce the music in the groove to fill my living room.
Sure, consumerism in this material world is to blame too, bombing people to buy stuff nobody really needs to survive (the need to impress the opposite sex with wealth in order to reproduce is another thing).
Well, thinking too much about it will just ruin my vinyl collecting hobby for good. At least I can think about something else now, I guess that was the true aim of it all.
I’m not that much of a fan of Suede, but I have enjoyed their latest one.