Over the years, people have been padding out their vinyl collections more and more. For a while, playing albums on your record player was considered dated. By then, people moved onto cassette players, then CDs, then just plain ol’ MP3s. But there was a magic to discovering new technology and finding new ways to play your music. Once streaming took the magic away, people started favoring old traditions again.
People largely ignored tapes, and the CDs still felt relatively recent. This naturally brought the reemergence of vinyl records into the zeitgeist. Now, people are paying full price for LPs, and some box sets are going for hundreds of dollars. But what are some must-haves in the collection? Noisey has you covered with four essential records you should buy when you’re shopping for vinyl.
4 Albums You Have To Buy To Start Your Vinyl Collection
‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye
What’s Going On is arguably the greatest album of all time, so it will sound amazing in any context. But I’d argue it’s most rewarding when sitting with it on a record player. The way Marvin Gaye howls about war and injustice makes it a timeless album that makes for good reflection when sitting with it on vinyl.
‘Pieces Of A Man’ by Gil Scott-Heron
Similar to What’s Going On, the jazzy disposition of Pieces Of A Man makes it extremely rewarding to sit with on a record player. The horns are rich, the chords are sharp, and you’re left with Gil Scott-Heron’s prescient musings of the world around him.
‘Loveless’ by My Bloody Valentine
Few artists make a guitar sound as mesmerizing as My Bloody Valentine. On vinyl, the fuzz amplifies even further, with a slight grainy quality that makes a dreamy album like this even easier to stare into the void.
‘Piñata’ by Freddie Gibbs and Madlib
Sometimes, a lot of hip-hop vinyl can feel a bit redundant. There isn’t an obvious gap in audio quality between the record player, a CD, and the MP3. All you’re left with is the feeling and the setting in which you’re playing it. A lot of hip-hop can sound best within big booming speakers in a car, where the motion of the record matches the movement of the car.
But sometimes, you have rap albums that sound just as good on vinyl as they do in other mediums. Piñata by Freddie Gibbs and Madlib is a great example of this, where Madlib’s rich, jazzy background informs his hip-hop production. As a result, the grainy texture you can hear on a record player remains with how he constructs the sample. Mix that with Gibbs’ strong voice and presence, and it’s a great album to add to the collection.
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