Few know the name Emile Berliner today, but if you’ve ever lowered a stylus on to a record, you owe the man a debt. The scion of a Jewish merchant family from Hanover, Berliner dodged the family business in order to become an inventor working in the fledgling field of sound recording. Others were before him – inventors such as Thomas Edison, who discovered how to capture sound on tinfoil, or wax cylinder. But it was in 1887 that Berliner was granted a patent for his Gramophone: a device that drew a stylus along a rotating, opaque surface. Look at the record produced by his company, the US-based Berliner Gramophone, in 1897 and you see something that closely resembles the seven-inch single that you might pull from a paper sleeve today.
Traditionally, the marketplace shows little mercy to an obsolete format. The piano roll, the wax cylinder, the cassette tape, the minidisc, the CD – all are extinct, or heading that way. But vinyl is bucking the trend. Vinyl album sales between January and March of 2015 were 53 percent higher than the first three months of 2014. And the format has its fans. “As precious or snobby as it may sound, I personally still consume music almost entirely on vinyl,” says Nick Millhiser of New York duo Holy Ghost! “I buy vinyl, I listen to vinyl at home. It’s what we both learned to DJ on. That physicality is just more fun – going to record stores, combing through records, and flipping through a bag of records in a booth beats doing all of the equivalents from behind the neon glow of an LCD screen any day. Under ideal circumstances, vinyl does sound better too. It’s just a fact.”
Perhaps Berliner’s methods have endured because he took the idea of storing sound seriously. Wax cylinders were hardly durable, lasting only a few dozen plays, and were largely considered a novelty or curiosity. But Berliner’s record was built to last. Experimenting with materials throughout the 1890s, he tried out zinc, celluloid, plaster of Paris and rubber before fixing on a new material, a resin named shellac. He also worked with one Eldridge R Johnson, a clockmaker from New Jersey, to manufacture machines powered by spring motors that would power his gramophone at a steady speed.
“To some degree, vinyl is an art object,” says Sean Bidder, creative director at The Vinyl Factory, a London-based music company who produce bespoke limited edition records, all cut at an old EMI pressing plant. Working with artist-musicians like Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack and Dinos Chapman, The Vinyl Factory straddles the art and music worlds, and Bidder points out how the format suits a “craft” or “artisan” approach.
Photograph: Alamy
“Fundamentally you can do a lot with a record itself – you can use coloured vinyl, you can handpress it. You have gatefold sleeves, so you can make the artwork bigger. In the early heyday of vinyl, there was a lot of love for the format as well as the music. You didn’t get that with tapes, you didn’t get that with CDs… it’s hard to feel fondly towards something you’ve been sold for £10, but you know cost 10p to produce.”
There’s also a level of identity forming to vinyl collecting. “People like having nice objects – a nice pair of shoes is satisfying,” says Joe Daniel of Independent Label Market.
And in the same way, people like having a collection that in some way reflects their personality, or is a way of expressing themselves.” Independent Label Market was founded in London in 2009, and has since brought together over 180 different record labels to markets from London to Berlin to Los Angeles. “It has a farmers market appeal,” continues Daniel. “You can buy records direct from the person who invested the money in the record, and worked with the artist to bring it to life. It’s like buying the cheese direct from the cheesemaker.”
Perhaps it’s this that has attracted a new audience, searching for a sense of community absent in the digital music realm. “It’s interesting how a younger audience have got into it,” says Bidder. “A lot of new turntables have come on the market priced 100 or 200 pounds. That is an entry-level turntable. Technics are remaking the 1210 after abandoning it. So there is a demand there for people to own and play the records.” It may not have been exactly what Emile Berliner intended when he cut his first plate, but he wanted these sounds to last; you suspect he’d appreciate it.
Three labels pressing incredible vinyl
Ninja Tune
The downtempo UK label produced a Bonobo record, Cirrus, that functioned as a zoetrope, creating an animation as it spins on a turntable.
Death Waltz Recording Co
Sumptuous 180gm vinyl reissues of vintage horror soundtracks with brand new artwork from artists like Mike Saputo, Jay Shaw and Candice Tripp.
Wax Mage Records
A label specializing in incredible coloured vinyl experiments, made in association with Cleveland, Ohio’s Gotta Groove Records. Check out their Instagram.
Famous for a reason
Emile Berliner didn’t seek fame, but his remarkable inventions propelled him on to the world stage. The Famous Grouse’s reputation is also built upon this ethos. Created in 1896, the founder Matthew Gloag didn’t want to be famous, he simply wanted to make the best whisky he could possibly make so he created The Grouse Brand. It soon became so popular that it was renamed The Famous Grouse. Renowned for its quality, craftsmanship and exceptional taste, The Famous Grouse is available in four expressions, including the smooth The Famous Grouse Mellow Gold and the distinctive The Famous Grouse Smoky Black.
Please enjoy The Famous Grouse whisky responsibly.
