Isn’t it good to listen to old albums that you haven’t heard for ages? Those albums that were constantly on your CD player that you forget you had? Today I listen to the first Cardigans album. What’s that about? It came out in 1995 which isn’t really that long ago now that I’ve said it out loud but I probably haven’t listened to it since around then. It rocks.

I had an argument the other day with someone about their collection of vinyl. My friend was playing some records and I made a comment about how vinyl and CDs are annoy me. They take up space, they get scratched easy, you lend them away and never get them back and you spend hours going through them trying to find the music you might want to listen to. Give me digital with its easy searching, its Ipod sized storage and its perfect sound. Ok so it was more of a rant than a comment but I’d had a few beers.

Unfortunately my friend is a die hard audiophile who proceeded to go on a far more passionate rant about how CDs produce a sound that lacks punch and emotion unlike the rich tones that vinyl can produce. He became quite animated as he described the record as an almost living thing. Its cover art and sleeve being a collectible item one which should be cherished and cared for much like a pet. He went on to inform me about how common it is for modern digital albums to be over-compressed and that for many new releases vinyl is on the only way to get a properly mastered copy of the album. I was educated for several minutes on how the sound of the bass is apparently “thicker, richer and more nuanced.”

I had clearly woken a beast and I refrained from arguing. My education lasted the best part of fifteen minutes at which point the music that had been playing on my friend’s record player stopped.

Nothing else followed and we were left with a lingering silence in which I stifled a smug laugh.

My friend refused to look me in the eye as he said: ‘Turn the record over will you?’