UK Record Shops

I'm just geting damn annoyed. Why is it so hard to go into a UK record shop and find anything different than what they specialize in?? I mean I walked into a US record shop recently looking for techno and they've got everything from Deep House to Old School Electro to Hard Techno, to rock to punk. Was well impressed. Actually, maybe they did a gay commercial trance section in the corner to pull the birds but I'll forgive them :lol:

Only joking. But I think UK shops are too specialist or either a commercial bunch of wank dance music. We just can't look left or right. Only centre. Is the only thing we have available to us techno, or house or dance music??? Or maybe a little bit of progressive to look cool??????

Grrrrrr......

I think music needs to move on and I think record shops are the place to do it. Am just sick of seeing the same old categories. Can we not have 'Brain Eno' section????? See my point???? WE NEED DIVERSITY.

God I hate moaning, this is not what this site is about. But I'm really interested in what everyone thinks on this. What is your perfect record shop??????

POSTS NEEDED ON THIS!!!!

:lol:

mhmhmh mine is www.juno.co.uk its pretty good has some really tasty techno & shipps only in 1week :cool:

no, i'm not after a list of record shops matey, i'm after as discussion on the subject ;)

a long time ago in a city far far away (or not), record shops used to get a load of white lables from local/regional artists and to a certan extent that defined your sound as a dj, 3 beat in liverpool is a classic example. you used to get loads of stuff on their label and shit, sometimes they would never be released nationally. but now all the shops seem to have the same nationally distributed releases, which imo means we all have lots of mini hmv's !!!! I go to 3 main shops, eastern bloc (manchester) 3 beat (liverpoool) and inner city (leeds), all the other shit i buy is on the net, but i think there is nothing better than going to a store and listerning to tracks, it makes my day :lol: :lol:

specialise or die. **** diversity. if i want an eno record i'll borrow one of my dad's. i hate rock and punk.

we're a techno shop. it's what we love. we do also stock deep house, glitchy gear, old school house/jungle/hardcore, italo disco, electro and electronica.

most people who start shops do so due to a love of a particular style of music. nothing wrong with it. it's good for the soul to be doing something you really love. the only ones i can't do with are the overpriced, trend following pack em in and shift em out breadheads. we've got 1 up here. 3 years ago they sold trance, hard house and breaks. now they're all techno, electro and minimal.... blah blah **** off.

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Originally Posted by romelpotter

a long time ago in a city far far away (or not), record shops used to get a load of white lables from local/regional artists and to a certan extent that defined your sound as a dj, 3 beat in liverpool is a classic example. you used to get loads of stuff on their label and shit, sometimes they would never be released nationally. but now all the shops seem to have the same nationally distributed releases, which imo means we all have lots of mini hmv's !!!!

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we can only sell whats out there rommel. there's a couple of local producers who bring us stuff in and it sells ok but there just isn't the amount of this stuff to base a shop on.

i still think we have a sound though. there's nowhere in the north of england who stocks the techno that we do. check tony and jorge at next months darkside for a taste of the basement trax sound.

go to any other bar or club in leeds any night of the week for a taste of the other 5 or 6 shops identical german acid/electro sound...

my local 'chunes' run by techno dj meri, is crack on...nuff sed... :clap:

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Originally Posted by MARK EG

I'm just geting damn annoyed. Why is it so hard to go into a UK record shop and find anything different than what they specialize in?? I mean I walked into a US record shop recently looking for techno and they've got everything from Deep House to Old School Electro to Hard Techno, to rock to punk.

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I can name 2 record shops in Leeds which cater for everyone's taste and it's not hmv or virgin. Sure, they tend to get the more accesible sides in stock,especially in the dance genre but you can get anything from funk to jazz right through to click house & techno.

I prefer specialised shops though, just because they tend to know what you're tlaking about when you're after something other than a drumcode title. Although saying that, I do remember HMV in Leeds getting some old stock of techno which they obviously had no idea of their value and knocked them out at ten a penny :lol:

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Originally Posted by DJ Corbzy

my local 'chunes' run by techno dj meri, is crack on...nuff sed... :clap:

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Agreed, probs the best record store ive been in.

Meri, the legend sold me a copy of mario piu - Mathmos for a tenner incl p&p, got a hugh back catalogue, with real gems instead of the normal shite, and some amazin new releases.

Really, hats off.


Think mark, to kind agree with you in a way, this doesnt concern tech releases too much, but is still on topic, when alpha went bust, did anyone else notice shops were stocking half of what they used to, alpha goes bust, shopes stop stockin hard trance etc?

Load o bolloks that is, i have found myself using places abroad, but it costs an arm and a leg, not good.

At least you guys have a record shop to go to.. :cry:

Alien Records was in buisness here in austin for 12 years and just last year they closed due to the owners personal issues. Buisness wasnt bad, the owner just blew it.

The most depressing part for me is they had asked me to order the techno for them since they never had anything good as far as techno . I got to place about 3 orders and then CLOSED out of nowhere. No more records at cost. But it seems good things dont last long.

As far as thier selection they mainly catered to house but that would have changed if they would not have closed.

So now all I can do is order online. I find more records i want at Juno Tune Inn ect, but i usually end up paying anywhere from 50-70 bucks just for shipping major bummer...

Ive never been to the UK shops in person but it seems the online shops have a pretty good range of styles at least as far as dance music..

There are other record stores here but they are like you are talking of specialty shops. Mainly for Punk Rock..

This prob doesnt quite relate to your frustration. I just miss being able to actually listen to a record on a deck before buying. ;)

Impossible to expect someone to hold that much stock in the hope of getting the WOW factor and no sales, little and often - I'm with Paul on this one...

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Originally Posted by Paul Nisbet

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Originally Posted by DJ Corbzy

my local 'chunes' run by techno dj meri, is crack on...nuff sed... :clap:

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Agreed, probs the best record store ive been in.

Meri, the legend sold me a copy of mario piu - Mathmos for a tenner incl p&p, got a hugh back catalogue, with real gems instead of the normal shite, and some amazin new releases.

Really, hats off.

.

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yea man i got a copy of dave clarke "before I.....interupted" fro john @ eastern bloc, it had origionally been sne toff aas part os a shipment to some rich arab\ but form some reason they all got returned, so john let me have it for a tenner, i had the biggest grin from ear to ear all the way home :lol: :lol:

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Originally Posted by darkside

specialise or die. **** diversity. if i want an eno record i'll borrow one of my dad's. i hate rock and punk.

we're a techno shop. it's what we love. we do also stock deep house, glitchy gear, old school house/jungle/hardcore, italo disco, electro and electronica.

most people who start shops do so due to a love of a particular style of music. nothing wrong with it. it's good for the soul to be doing something you really love. the only ones i can't do with are the overpriced, trend following pack em in and shift em out breadheads. we've got 1 up here. 3 years ago they sold trance, hard house and breaks. now they're all techno, electro and minimal.... blah blah **** off.

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i've been to your shop on numerous occasions as you know, but my point is, i'd love to come in and you to say 'this is the rack for shit you've never heard before'. that never happens in shops these days. i mentioned punk and rock or eno only to prove my point. i just think, record shops are the key to broadening ppl's horizons and many of them dont...

technotice + record box are wicked as are three shades here in brum they get me in what i want!

Louk

I have two places that I go to where they stock pretty much everything, which is handy coz I play as much variety as I can. For example I've got a warm up slot coming up and found myself looking through the prog house section as well as the techno section and ended up buying some stuff on labels I'd never even heard of by artists I'd never even heard of too. It's a great feeling when you walk out of a shop with something different. So they are out there unfortunately they arnt anywhere near Leeds. :neutral:

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Originally Posted by MARK EG

i've been to your shop on numerous occasions as you know, but my point is, i'd love to come in and you to say 'this is the rack for shit you've never heard before'. that never happens in shops these days. i mentioned punk and rock or eno only to prove my point. i just think, record shops are the key to broadening ppl's horizons and many of them dont...

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yes that would be good but if shops can't sell it, its not in their interest to stock it. a lot more people listen to different shit on the net and so when their in the shops they pritty much know what they want, but yea i agree that would be cool to get some stuff of a rack that you know you had never herd before.

i reckon its all about goin to different shops rather than stickin to 1 or 2 nearly all the time. fair enough, when youre a regular the staff get to know what you like and you get a better crack at the styles you usully buy, but most shops (good, indie shops, not hmv etc) have their own fields of expertise and if you go to different places and talk to the staff you can get expert recommendations on any style. in leeds we got jumbo, crash, soul alley, relics, tune inn (kinda) and they all have their niche.

but blatantly basement trax for techno every time ;)

i dunno, maybe were jus lucky in leeds but i reckon most cities have a good variety of shops if you venture out a bit

UK shops in general are difficult, sometimes not due to the buyers, mainly due to the customer base they have. the random variables being - records available, buyers knowledge/amiability, customer base buying tendencies. if any of these hiccup at all you end up with a shit shop.
theres clearly plenty of records out there, some of the buyers/sellers in shops could sort it out but they have far too much of their own agenda, and the customer base in this country invariably lets them down. all reports back say that despite the fact that most of the time the buyers are loving what i'm playing them, they dont have the buyers for it, and have to steer the sales towards the obvious/mainstream.
but you cant blame the customers when smetimes they want to buy that extremely weird 12" for one track but its £8.99, thats a killer.

all in all, unfortunately, most shops lack quality, stock and diversity. i am fully aware that this is because it's just so damn expensive to run a record store, and you have to respond to the tastes of the customers or else you go out of business. in the US, this has meant we have fewer and fewer stores, whereas in the UK, there are a lot more stores, but whose stock is generally less diverse.

what i love best is a shop like mental groove in geneva, now deceased sonic groove in new york, or dead-as-nails atlas in london...lots of different stuff, almost all of it good, helpful staff, and a big back catalog.
for sheer weirdness, kim's video in nyc is great...where else can you get multiple volumes of cambodian psychedelic rock collections from the 1970s?

to borrow an idea from another thread, i think that a lot of people making techno would really benefit from contact with music from outside techno. in my opinion--shared by some but not all posters on BOA--techno has become too self-referential. i think mark is right about shaking things up a bit, and is right to criticize overspecialization in record stores.

i think you're asking just too much there marky boy.
i love shopping in record shops in town
in fact i still haven't bought anything online yet because i'm trying to support the shops for exactly the reason that you seem to dislike.
i like the fact that shops are specialist , you have staff who work there who really know the music and love it ,if you owned a store and you started to brach into areas that your staff didn't know about you would be effectively just trying to play the same game as a chain store , only without the immense buying power to back it up , which is just pointless really.
i'm sure a lot of shop owners would love to be more diverse , but they have to actualy sell records and whats the point of trying to sell hip hop/r+b/ambient/whatever to a techno buying crowd when there's a hip hop store down the road that has twice as much stock and knowledge about it than you do.
no sorry mark specialising is good for business, ignorance is bad for all of us , we need to learn the difference sometimes.