Having moved about 4000 records to a third house in three years I’m getting ready to concede that there is a possibility that my wife and parents are right, I’m never going to listen to them all again. And that’s sad, because although I’d consider myself equal parts collector and selector, records are meant to be played. Like a lot of other record collections that haven’t been turned over (don’t think i’ve ever sold a plate) I’m also willing to recognise that most people would never want to listen to them all, as there is a lot of randomness in there spanning a shitload of genres, eras and obscure movements.
From my time doing a dedicated funk show on FBi Radio, living with Maccy D, to Sensei.fm in the UK when I was working at Boombox Distribution and picking up a lot of hip-hop, the Awkward Movements shows on Samurai.fm when we started releasing records, working at Phonica Records in Soho and properly discovering house (thanks Simon and crew), meeting the likes of Liam, Paul, Raynulds and Jimmy Monsta Funk and then through to the 5 years we did the NTS show for, there’s distinct periods in my life that can be categorised by my record collection. Each one has a reason I bought it, asked for it, was given it or picked up for free out of a skip. I’d argue I can remember the reasoning behind about 98% of my collection.
Records are meant to be played, and I’m going to put my purchasing on hold for a little while to do exactly that. Play through my entire collection. As I explain at the start of the show we’re going left to right on my filing, playing the records in the order I stored them in most recently and talking about each one.
This is Episode 1 of All My Records. I’m hoping to run this as a single deck show, one off and one on, recording straight in to a Zoom H5. As became evidently clear though, it’s not easy to cue records without a second deck, nor work levels without a mixer, so I hope you’ll forgive that Ep 1 is a bit rough and ready and take some of the levels and skipping as a bit of charm for one man and one deck. We’ll work on getting that cleared up.
20 records down, a lot more to go. No schedule here or proper format, or even a guarantee that I’ll keep it going. For the meantime though, hope you dig it.
Oh, I’ve also decided to create a gallery instead of bother with typing at track lists. Scroll through below.
