Category Archives: Record Shops

Who Is Turntabling?

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Joe Wallace Vinyl RecordsTurntabling has been expanding lately and going through some changes and now seems to be a great time to reintroduce myself and Turntabling.

My name is Joe Wallace, and for all intents and purposes, I am Turntabling. I run Turntabling from the 5th floor of the Bridgeport Art Center, where I also do vinyl-related art shows and special events. There is a large inventory of vinyl records there, and it’s getting larger all the time. I will have to hire people to help me run it all one of these days soon…but I’m dreading that as I like to personally take care of everything related to Turntabling.

I started collecting records at a very young age, but didn’t get serious about buying until 1997, when I started amassing a pile of bizarre regional and obscure New Wave records from Texas and elsewhere.

I got obsessed with collecting Goblin titles after purchasing two CD compilations of Goblin soundtrack music from an Austin record shop called 33 Degrees, which is now sadly long gone…Goblin led to collecting Ennio Morricone work from the 1960s through 1980s, and that led to buying Riz Ortolani soundtracks, which led to an interest in Bossa Nova and related sounds that could be heard in giallo movies, Italian horror films, sexy Euro cinema and other films from that era between 1960 and say, 1986.

Eurohorror figures largely into these things, too but some of those influential soundtracks are REALLY hard to find these days–IF they are even available at all. Try finding a vinyl copy of the OST for The Blood Spattered Bride or Jess Franco’s Venus In Furs and you’ll see what I mean.

Turntabling has an almost Japanese vinyl otaku focus to it in that I am very interested in soundtrack records in general, but especially Italian horror, giallo, and exploitation. I’m also into anything electronic, bizarre, naughty or experimental on vinyl. I try to sell things I want in my own collection, and I am always up for purchasing record collections or lots of albums that include New Wave, Goth, Industrial, Experimental, No Wave, etc.

So basically I am on the lookout for electronic, experimental, soundtracks, and unclassifiable/weird records. Since I buy AND sell, I am always happy to consider offers from people who want to sell their collection of records.

I scour the earth for vinyl records to list for sale in the Turntabling Discogs shop and to add to my own collection. When I am not selling vinyl records, I’m planning vinyl-related art shows as mentioned above, and other creative endeavors.

When you buy from Turntabling, you buy from me and support the vinyl projects I run from the 5th floor of the Bridgeport Art Center. You also support the annual cross-country record store blogging trip I do called Vinyl Road Rage. It takes of a LOT of gas and hotel money to blog about America’s most wonderful places–the record stores–and every album you buy from Turntabling supports that effort, too.

If you have questions, want to buy vinyl, or want to sell a record collection, please get in touch with me: orders@turntabling.net. If you’re interested in connecting with me on social media, please drop me a friend request at Facebook or connect with me on Instagram. I’m also on Twitter.

Thanks for your interest and keep on spinning those records!

–Joe Wallace

Ars Technica On The Growth Of Vinyl

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United Pressing vinyl records nashville That coupon you see here is from United Pressing, the record plant in Nashville Tennessee. When Ars Technica reported earlier this month that United Record Pressing was expanding its operation to move from 30 pressing machines to 46, it included a tantalizing factoid about the growth of vinyl and how record sales are recorded and reported:

Nielsen’s SoundScan reported that 6.1 million vinyl records were sold in 2013, up from 4.6 in 2012 and under 1 million in 2007. But as The New York Times reported last year, “manufacturers, specialist retailers, and critics argue that SoundScan’s figures represent only a fraction of actual sales” and perhaps only account for as little as 10 to 15 percent of total vinyl sales, because Nielsen tracks records sold, rather than records pressed, and many vinyl manufacturers don’t print bar codes on their record sleeves, so sales from independent shops that don’t report to Nielsen don’t get counted.

If you have ever wondered about the hows and whys of vinyl records as a viable business–and I don’t just mean selling them–that quote says a hell of a lot.  For most businesses, tracking sales and recording related, relevant data is a big part of critical decision making that helps the business survive. But what can you do when the most basic business intel is incomplete?

Well, if you’re a record vendor, the answer is “make a profit”. Vinyl ain’t your typical MBA-run industry.  (It’s actually pretty lazy writing to classify an entire marketplace as “vinyl”. But you know what I mean–the business of recording, pressing, selling and promoting music on a physical record.)

That’s actually one of the most appealing things ABOUT vinyl–the fact that a nice little chunk of the business isn’t subject to the usual corporate nonsense. Of course, there are people who will try to shove the square peg into the round hole and force our beloved vinyl business into some kind of rinse, lather, repeat model. But thanks to indie retailers and what seems to be a general allergy to that sort of thing among musicians and record sellers alike, we keep getting news stories like the Ars Technica piece.

Though I will say, bar coding DOES make tracking your inventory a hell of a lot easier…

Rare CDs Are Fun To Collect, Too!

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Man From Deep River Soundtrack CD


Sometimes you can’t find this stuff on vinyl but there are TONS of limited edition releases out there of soundtracks like this….it takes some dedicated digging to turn them up from time to time, but there are lots of no-more-than-1000-made reissues of soundtracks like these thanks to awesome labels like Beat, Cinevox, Easy Tempo and much more…

And yes, Turntabling DOES sell rare, hard-to-find, weird, and just plain cool soundtracks on CD too. We’re at http://www.discogs.com/seller/Turntabling on Discogs.com




Black Tape For A Blue Girl: Remnants of a Deeper Purity On Vinyl

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Black Tape For A Blue GirlFor decades, Projekt Records has been releasing dark music on vinyl, CD, and digitally. The label is home to a variety of artists including Black Tape For A Blue Girl, Steve Roach, Voltaire, Unto Ashes, Weep (Doc Hammer, co-writer of the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros.), and Love Spirals Downwards.

When vinyl hit that strange twilight zone era between CDs and digital, many record labels stopped paying to press LPs in favor of the digital option. Projekt Records vinyl is hard to come by (there’s one single, solitary Black Tape For A Blue Girl title on LP in the Turntabling Collection) but there’s a new title in the works–something darkwave fans are sure to love.

Patrick Ogle talked with Projekt’s Sam Rosenthal about a new vinyl release currently in the funding stage on Kickstarter. On the Projekt Kickstarter page, Rosenthal says, “People often ask if I am going to put out something from Black tape for a blue girl on vinyl. In fact, there was vinyl years ago for the first two albums. But that was a different era, and now it’s time for us to put out vinyl again. When I say “us,” I mean you and me; because together, we can make Remnants of a deeper purity exist on vinyl. It’s your support through the pledges (to the right) that will raise the money so this project can happen.”

Why vinyl? Why this release and why now?

It was really the fans on Facebook who inspired this. They’d been asking me about Blacktape on vinyl, and I’ve been sort of hemming and hawing: not sure if there really was a need for it. But they kept asking, and I figured, ‘why not!’ Remnants of a deeper purity was recently voted their favorite album, also on Facebook. So it seemed like the logical album to release.

Why do you think this is the best selling black tape release?

That’s a really hard one to answer. I’ve always felt that Remnants is one of the more ‘obscure’ Blacktape albums, in that it’s about forty percent instrumental and long violin/cello passages. It’s a lovely album, just not the most mainstream of my releases. It came out in 1996, which was really the peak of the darkwave scene. So it’s success might partially be due to ‘right album at the right time.’

If it were more economical would you do more releases on vinyl?

We’ll have to see about that. It’s really a question of demand. You know that people are rapidly abandoning physical formats. So this Kickstarter will help me understand the desire for my music on Vinyl. If people want it, I’ll certainly do more.

Do you think the audience for vinyl are as interested in the packaging as the sound quality?

I think so, yeah. That’s the big draw for me. I love the large format landscape of an album cover. Remnants is going to have an 8-page booklet. that’s going to be super lovely! And it’s going to include the names of everyone who pledged on Kickstarter. That’s a really nice thank you for people’s help making it happen.

Have you ever thought of doing a subscription service a la “Third Man” for Projekt?

I’ve been thinking about doing that for Black Tape For A Blue Girl, actually. With the diversity of the releases on Projekt, I don’t know if people would go for the subscription. Do the ambient fans want the Goth Rock releases? I dunno. Maybe that’s a question I should be discussing on Facebook, to see what people think.

Are you going to remaster this for vinyl? What are you listening for in a vinyl release versus mastering and mixing for CD?

I have a guy in Europe who is going to master the album for me. Anders Peterson at GS Mastering & Post is the guy Mannequin Records used to master the reissue of my 1985 minimal synth album TANZMUSIK. He did a fabulous job, so I’m asked him to do Remnants for me.

He really knows what to do, to make great sounding vinyl. What am I listening for? Well, the album was mastered in 1996. So I definitely think the technology has improved, to make it a much better sounding album. I am going back to the original DAT mixes, will transfer them to digital, and then listen for what I think needs improvement, and will send those notes along to Anders. It’s going to sound great.

The Black Tape For A Blue Girl Kickstarter to put Remnants Of A Deeper Purity on vinyl ends at Midnight on December 16th.