Tag: record shop

Vinyl Realm Settles Into New Home

A median haul of vinyl can weigh in, but there’s no longer a trek down Northgate Street for record collectors and musicians alike. Vinyl Realm has settled into their new location on Devizes High Street and shopping there is a much more spacious and airy experience …..

Much as I loved the idea of a record shop opening in Devizes, being just the way I remember and loved them in days of yore, eight years ago on that inception, I confess I put a time limit on the place. Even then the threat on High Street shopping was real, and the want for vinyl records in this digital era was questionable. But Vinyl Realm is not only bucking both trends, locally it’s been a detrimental influence on them, proving well managed music shops are here to stay.

You can browse there, flip through those twelve-inch cardboard covers, remembering their look and feel, and the anticipation of taking one home and dropping your needle on that beauty. But then, perhaps, you consider the phone in your pocket, and the infinite digital stash of music it can provide with one click; sacrilegious here! Maybe you sold your hi-fi or record decks years ago. Streaming changed the music industry to a throwaway culture rather than the thrill of treasuring a physical disc, but one half of Vinyl Realm provides record decks and hi-fi, or fixes your old ones, effectively returning you to the retro game like Jon Bon Jovi in a newfound blaze of glory, should you require to.

Vinyl Realm remains one of the very few surviving secondhand record shops in the South West, and whilst Devizes loves tradition, visitors to the store will arrive here from destinations much further afield, for a range of vinyl too vast to fit into the shop, though the scope to display more is greater here at their new home.

More spacious too, allowing a freedom of movement somewhat previously restricted at their Northgate location. You might know how it goes; reunited with a long-lost record you once worshipped, just resting in that library of memories, praying for a new owner, and now nothing exists in the world other than you and the piece of vinyl you’re jumping up and down with, waving enthusiastically in the air yelping, “I found it! I found it! For the love of the almighty David Gilmour, I found it!” not even the beatnik browsing dangerously nearby. The risk of bumping into him through your excitement, and him spilling his freshly boiled flask of vegan broth over you and your must-buy is greatly reduced with the space to move around The Realm’s new shop!!

Tamsin Quin outside the original location of Vinyl Realm at Long Street, in 2018. Image: Hennessy

Bitching to a rising retrospective trend in vinyl, a brand new Taylor Swift long-player could pinch the best part of fifty quid from your purse. At Vinyl Realm you’d return home with a substantial stash for that cost, as the prices here are nearly as retro as the records. For a want of more surprises, they flog CD’s and cassettes too, owner Pete tells me “tapes” sell equally as well as records. I could suppose they were the post-internet music sharing format, after all, but Pete suggested Walkmans were back in, really? Whatever next? Etch A Sketch?!

And if you’re one for creating music yourself, there’s a range of instruments and accessories like guitar strings, the odd display of merchandise, and related handmade crafts. Long live Vinyl Realm, where you can buy a record, chat music, grab the tools to make your own or purchase equipment to play them on. Even get that broken hi-fi repaired, as all repairs are done onsite and nothing is shipped off to a company; making this beloved Devizes shop sustainable and, by its very name, a realm for all things music. The move to the High Street and the fact it’s not easy to grab a quote from Pete or Jackie as they busily attend a constant flow of customers, is evidence of its long-lived success.

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Swindon-based adrenaline pumping five-piece Liddington Hill released their first EP for three years, and Radium is highly radioactive….. For most on the North Wessex Downs,…

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