Vinyl, but not as we knew it

摘要

I'm certain that I can't be the only middle-aged music lover who is mystified by the renaissance of the vinyl LP But what exactly do we mean by a vinyl LP? Are we talking about the beautifully produced 180g virgin vinyl discs that I see mounted and displayed proudly on the wall of my local hi-fi shop that retail for between £20 and £30? Or do we mean the mercifully obsolete dross with the appallingly low production values that plagued my teenage years in the 1970s and '80s? A trip down memory lane recalls the RCA Itzhak Perlman LP of the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky violin concertos that was little better than a bendy 'giveaway' disc and which distorted at any dynamic over mezzo-forte. (It took me a long time to discover that Perlman was in fact a master musician!) Or, perhaps, the favourite LP that developed clicks, pops and surface matter no matter how reverential one was when it came to handling and cleaning it.