By Lissa Christopher
Vinyl records are high maintenance, brittle and expensive. You can't play them on the bus to work. You need the precision of a surgeon to skip a track without scratching them. And - given it's possible to store hundreds of digital tracks on an MP3 player roughly the size of two Minties stuck end-on-end - they're an absurd size.
A younger generation of indie music fans, however, has come to love them almost precisely for these limitations and they're helping to fuel a resurgence in vinyl sales that has been noted by sources far and wide.
LP lives: Super Wild Horses' Hayley McKee (left) and Amy Franz.Credit: Mia Mala McDonald
This group is the latest addition to the list of long-standing vinyl supporters, including DJs, analogue audiophiles and collectors, who have kept the format from outright extinction since the '90s, when it was vanquished by the CD. And they seem to be looking to the grooved, black discs less for their audio qualities than for some sense of artistic meaning and longevity that's missing from digital production. They're happy to care tenderly for discs, to pay a bit more and buy a bit less, and to be restricted to one location to listen to them because vinyl offers so many emotional pay-offs.
Carriageworks' upcoming At First Sight event is a local example of this younger, indie crowd's music values in action. It is part music festival and part record fair. The music festival will showcase local DJs and up-and-coming Australian bands, including HTRK, the Laurels, Holy Balm, Super Wild Horses and Shining Bird. The record fair will give independent record shops, private record dealers and a number of independent music labels a chance to sell both new and second-hand vinyl, and to talk to other music lovers about what they're doing.
On track: FBi Radio's Marty Doyle, curator of At First Sight, will bring vinyl buyers and sellers together at a one-day music and record fair being held at Carriageworks.Credit: Wolter Peeters
It is the idea of FBi Radio's Marty Doyle, together with Carriageworks, and interaction is key to the plan. The event is being promoted as a day devoted to independent record stores and to the sorts of people who buy vinyl, go to gigs and like to ''experience music culture in the flesh''.
Doyle says a lot of people don't care what format their music takes as long as it's convenient, but At First Sight is for the others. The people who ''need that tangible product. Who need to hold onto to something and look at it and feel it''. People who want a more holistic and vivid experience from their music.
''How many memorable moments do you have of downloading an MP3?'' he says.
They're cheap, fast, easy and convenient, and a lot of people download thousands of MP3 tracks and then listen to only a fraction of what they have.
It has left some with an empty feeling. ''At some point, people have gone, everything is convenient but meaningless,'' says Utopia Records vinyl buyer Ray Ahn, who will be at the event. Vinyl seems to represent some kind of antidote to that feeling.
Melbourne ''no-fi'' garage band Super Wild Horses - aka Amy Franz and Hayley McKee - embody many of the values At First Sight represents. They have released several vinyl products, including a seven-inch EP and two full-length albums. They hold vinyl in high esteem and also collect it.
''My partner and I go to all the record fairs down here [in Melbourne] and make some terrible mistakes based on how good the cover looks,'' McKee, 32, says. ''But record fairs are fun … there's always a story behind whatever people are selling.''
For her, vinyl was primed with positive associations long before she started buying records or making her own music. ''I remember … my dad putting on his terrible Genesis vinyl, or something like that, but there was always vinyl, and it was always treated as a really special kind of thing, to pull out of the sleeve and put on the turntable. You treated records with care. They were a real treasured memento.''
How many memorable moments do you have of downloading an MP3?
Now, looking at her own vinyl products, she sees a format that seems less disposable than CDs or downloads, and more of a complete work of art. ''[A vinyl record] just looks more important,'' she says. ''Especially when you work hard with an artist to get this look across and then you get it back and it's on this tiny CD with a tiny booklet. It's much more beautiful when you're holding [a record] in front of you … It honours the whole package of what you were trying to put out.''
Ray Ahn also recognises the ''complete work of art'' appeal of vinyl, from a buyer's point of view. ''If you are a fan of a band, you want to know what the band wanted to say. [With vinyl you know that] the band wanted you to hear this song first and this song last. They wanted you to open up the gate fold and look at the picture and then take out the insert. Taking, say, one song from Sgt Pepper and putting it on an MP3 player, that's not a complete work of art. That's a sound bite.''
Ahn likens a CD of, say, a Beatles album to a postcard of the Mona Lisa you might buy in the Louvre gift shop - a replica that lacks the original's subtle charms. He can, however, also see a strong vein of nostalgia running through the thinking of many young, vinyl-focused fans and bands.
''A lot of what's good about the music industry is in the past. One of the signposts to that past is vinyl. If people are holding onto vinyl, they're holding onto good things about the past. You can say all you like about old farts and the Beatles and the Beach Boys, but there was a lot of earth shaking and culture shaking going on.''
Nic Warnock manages music label R.I.P. Records and works at Repressed Records in Newtown. He will DJ for At First Sight and host a stall selling new and used vinyl. For him, as both a label manager and a music enthusiast, vinyl is king, and he's loathe to see his commitment as a form of nostalgia.
''I am a [vinyl] collector and I am a nerd, but I don't see it as sort of fawning over some ancient product,'' he says. ''I just feel that a record is the best way to interact with music.
''Most of the people I know who really actively listen to music and really engage with it … still buy a physical format. It's a truer way of engaging with music. People say vinyl is for hipsters. I say it's the opposite. It's for people who really want to engage with their music.''
At First Sight is at Carriageworks, Eveleigh, on July 20.