Saturday 23 February 2013

Round & Round Records

Round and Round Records at 513 Sydney Rd, Brunswick VIC 3056.
Round and Round is my 'local', being the closest record shop to where I live and this is a damned fine thing too because it's one of the best record shops in Melbourne, IMHO.

Round and Round's owners are pretty friendly and welcoming and happy to provide additional information upon request.  The vinyl selection has been carefully curated and lovingly laid out with crates or records categorised loosely according to genre such as electronic, jazz, shoegaze, metal, Italian prog, experimental, punk, psych and psychedelic?, and a significan section arranged by decade. All sections are well populated often with seminal recordings and obscure gems you may not have known even existed, for example my Slowdive find (see below).
On top of the arrangement you will find almost every record's plastic sleeve contains a label either typed or hand written with a few sentences of essential information about the recording and although some of the blurbs may have been lifted from sites such as http://www.vinylsearcher.com/ this provides additional detail assisting in your selection.

I've visited this shop many times and find the selection has changes with the coming and going of records and even in relation to whats currently popular. One example of a sweet find is the Slowdive E.P. pictured below, this is a limited edition reprint with a hand screen printed cover (woot!). When I went to pay for this album the owner lamented the bitter sweets of seeing a newly stocked piece going out the door only a day after putting it on the shelf. I suggested that isn't that what you want 'fast stock turn over', to which he replayed 'yes, but it's also nice to have a few such gems on the shelf's so people can appreciate what cool taste we have'. Then there's the 1991 Shock records pressing of MBV's Temolo, a very sweet pickup indeed.


 Most recently Round and Round has fed my shoegaze retrospective and provided ample crossover with contemporary bands such as Toy, Ringo Deathstarr and Wooden Shjips. I have also enjoyed digging through their industrial and experimental crates and recently trued up Oren Ambarchi's 'Grapes from the estate' only to be informed that Oren also lives locally and often drops into the shop.

The only real criticism would again be the electronic section which is dated and limited with too many records which seem to be others castoffs. However this is such a huge area that anything but a dedicated record shop can't hope do more than a token offering.
Otherwise Round and Round is my benchmark record shop and holds a high bar.

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