...and I didn't get anywhere close to living up to my promise of writing more frequently, but that (with a following wind) will be changing. The upside of my self-created absence is that I've amassed a heap of interesting (to me) items that I will share over the coming weeks. First up though is music - or more specifically, the effect that the form in which recorded music is presented affects my engagement to it.
Courtesy of a benign confluence of events (my wife buying me a vinyl record player a little while back, and a visit to the Vinyl Head Cafe in Ramsgate which has a sizeable stock of good condition vinyl for sale, primarily from the 1970's and 1980's), my interest in the remains of my once very large vinyl collection - a good 80% of which went to boot sales and charity shops quite some years ago - has suddenly been re-awakened. I've spent the last few days playing, and enjoying, some old records but the enjoyment isn't just that I have damn good taste and therefore the music will always sound good. It's the ritual of playing an album, the length of time it consumes and the artefact itself that are as important as the musical content.
I don't necessarily hold with the view that "vinyl sounds warmer/better/more organic". I can't afford, am not interested in and am unlikely to buy a vinyl playing rig that will be anything more than mid-range, and, furthermore, the records I have got in my collection have gone the rounds of parties, numerous house moves and inappropriate storage conditions. Consequently, they will always sound sub-optimal compared to CDs or MP3s. My ears have never been good enough been to identify subtle improvements in sound quality - I remember experimenting when I first got an iPod and I couldn't hear any difference between a full lossless recording and a 96K MP3 - but I do know that a CD sounds (to my ears) way better than my rather battered vinyl does. So it's not the audio quality that attracts me (far from it!).
So, here's my opinion.
Playing vinyl involves a number of things - firstly, there's the ritual of getting the music ready. It's only a small thing, but the act of taking a record out of its sleeve and lining up the tone arm is considerably more effort (and a bunch more interesting) than hitting play on Spotify. Of course, the record sleeve and the record itself are things of beauty (well, a lot of record sleeves are - notable exceptions are also available) as is the information contained on them (notable exceptions to this are also available - step forward Led Zeppelin) and the pre-play perusal is part of ritual.
Secondly, the average LP is about 40 minutes in length, which feels to me like just the right amount of attention I would want to devote to listening to a single slab of work by any one band (this is also why I will never again listen to the Tales From Topographic Oceans triple - officially The World's Most Unlistenable Album), and you get a break in the middle to reflect, review and compose yourself before launching into side 2. During the early days of CDs, artists were cramming upwards of 16 tracks on each CD giving some way north of an hour of music, which is way too long to sustain quality and interest. 12 tracks maximum is what you need - 9 or 10 is better!
I won't be ditching my MP3's (it's the only option I've got for listening when I'm on the move), but I'm certain that I will be choosing vinyl as my preferred listening mode at home from here on in.....
