The bit where the rabbit holes escape the collection database and become stories: grading arguments, pressing archaeology, brocante finds, cleaning experiments, odd manufacturing trails and whatever else the records decide to start.

What turns up here

Pressing archaeology. Following labels, plants, matrices and metalwork to work out how a particular copy came into existence.

Record reviews. Not definitive criticism. Just what happened when I actually sat down and listened to the thing.

Grading, cleaning and collecting experiments. Including the increasingly obvious possibility that I am going to redesign parts of the vinyl industry from a spare room.

Brocante diaries and crate digging. Because spending €3 on something mysterious is often more fun than spending €80 on something predictable.

Starting points

The first pieces are about the hole in conventional record grading and the unexpectedly international manufacturing trail hiding in the dead wax of an a-ha album. Which feels about right for how this site came into existence.