Watch: Listening to albums as a body of work provides context

Vinyl records are from a time when music meant everything and the business of music was secondary. Albums were collections of tracks from artists, soundscapes of audio that represented a point in time, each release a musical anthology.

Today, music is mostly rented across digital platforms and served in single portions. Yet vinyl records have enjoyed a massive surge in popularity over the past decade and most major artists are now releasing albums digitally, as well as on vinyl.

Vinyl Junkie record store owner Benjy Mudie says the waiting list for some pressings is almost nine months, such is the global demand. The Randburg-based shop is reminiscent of some of music’s greatest hangouts like Street Records in Braamfontein and Hillbrow’s Look and Listen and Hillbrow Records.

You can touch and explore the sleeve artwork and sing along as the lyrics are printed on the inner sleeves. You can smell the vinyl and feel the music in every inch of your body. Before serving up bite-sized music on digital devices, CDs were the in-between format and promised the purest sound since nightingales hatched. But there is nothing that can compare to the richness and depth of a vinyl experience, says Mudie.

“I started my career in a record store four decades ago, and I am back, selling records.”

Music is his passion and vinyl albums are the vehicle of fulfilment. Between record stores, he was a record company executive first at WEA (Warner Brothers) which later became Tusk, managed his own record company Fresh and developed some incredible local acts like Falling Mirror and Mango Groove.

“What we’re trying to achieve at Vinyl Junkie is a sense of belonging with the music and that’s what you get with records. If you look back at the great stores of the past, they were places where you would go to indulge in the music.

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“I’ve always said to people, if you want to know about Pink Floyd, it’s no good listening to Another Brick in the Wall, rather listen to the album, it’s part of a greater context.”

And that, says Mudie, is what’s missing from today’s drive-through-like music consumption.

“You must listen to an album in context to understand how it works. And that’s the beautiful thing about albums, as we still call them, record albums. You listen to it as a body of work.”

He cited Queen’s epic Bohemian Rhapsody as another example.

“I am trying to create a visceral experience for people to come in and listen to the music and look at the covers and sit down and read the books.”

Music used to be the product of artists first and money matters came second, but that seems to have changed, he says.

“It always used to be that when you signed someone as a label, you’d work with them and develop their craft and careers year after year. That’s all gone now. I don’t see that passion any more.”