World Records: New Photo Exhibit Pays Tribute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turntables

Just yes­ter­day, The New York Times ran a piece declar­ing that vinyl is back. Once a casu­al­ty of the CD, vinyl records are now sell­ing at a steady clip, and not just to nos­tal­gic sex­a­ge­nar­i­ans. Younger music fans are embrac­ing old-school records, frankly because they deliv­er a bet­ter sound than com­pressed MP3s. When Daft Punk released its lat­est album Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries last month, 19,000 vinyl copies were sold, rep­re­sent­ing about 6% of over­all sales. And that may be a low­ball num­ber.

There is, of course, a nos­tal­gic com­po­nent to the vinyl revival. We fond­ly rem­i­nisce about the days when music had oth­er tan­gi­ble and aes­thet­ic dimen­sions. Remem­ber when you could feel the weight of the records, study the cov­er designs, rev­el in the lin­er notes, then slip the discs onto the turntable and watch them spin? Those mem­o­ries get cap­tured by a new pho­to exhib­it — “World Records” — being held at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Ange­les from June 8 to July 13. It fea­tures the work of Kai Schae­fer, who has pho­tographed over 100 clas­sic albums on an array of turnta­bles. Above, you’ll find a copy of Miles Davis’ jazz clas­sic, Kind of Blue, sit­ting on a Rekokut B‑12GH. Oth­er favorites of ours include Lon­don Call­ing by The Clash on a B&O Beogram 4004, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street on a Dual1010, and VU’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico on a Thorens TD 124II. You can vis­it a larg­er online gallery of pho­tos here.

via Slate and Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Neil Young Busts a Music Store for Sell­ing a Boot­leg CSNY Album (1971)