A LONG WAY FOR LONG PLAY

LP records, the medium your parents raved about, has a new hipster following. We lead you to the best places in the city to treat your raging vinyl fever

The ‘Long Play’ (LP) records that originally stored around 25 minutes of music on one side and that could be turned over and played, gave way to CDs, then to the MP3 and iTunes. “Nowadays, you’ve got several options to access music. Any song can be downloaded from the Internet in seconds. But what an LP record gives you is a unique experience. Analog sound quality is unmatchable,” says Zafar Shah, who runs the Shah Music Centre in Old Delhi.

The good old gramophone with the acoustic horn that once provided hours of listening pleasure right until the 1950s now mostly adorns living spaces as showpieces. Later models of turntables, especially those that saw much play in the 1970s and 1980s, are being dusted and put to use once more by those who grew up with them, and their latemillennial progeny. Those who enjoy that distinctive LP sound but don’t want to completely cut themselves off from the digital age often opt for new-age digital turntables that come with a USB port. Yes, Edison’s invention now comes in an avatar that allows you to connect to your PC and convert rare vinyl records into the digital format. Businessman Afroz Alam (30) bought a windup record player six years ago. “What attracted me to LP players was how you could make out the differences in the beats and vocals, an individuality of each sound. Digital music doesn’t offer that quality,” says Alam, who enjoys listening to Munni Begum, Abida Parveen and Begum Akhtar.