The Vinyl Revival

★★★ Dir. Pip Piper PROPER MUSIC GROUP Forty-minute celebration of the return of the black stuff. In 2009, vinyl fan Graham Jones set out to write a book memorialising the death of the independent record shop. By the time he’d published The Last Shop Standing, the book demanded to be the exact opposite: a raised glass to the unexpected comeback of a format once feared dead, but now sold in truckloads alongside pies, craft beer, coffee, etc. Jones’s follow-up, The Vinyl Revival And The Shops That Made It Happen, was published last year, and this short is its visual counterpart, interviewing shop owners, industry figures, cultural commentators and musicians including Nick Mason and Portishead’s Adrian Utley in the run-up to Record Store Day. We’re reminded – often – of how great vinyl looks, smells, sounds and feels, while also signalling hipster-ish rejection of digital culture and other troublesome modern-world innovations. And who would disagree?