What is it about playing a record that feels so natural, so sensual? Is it the warm sizzle that shivers up through the needle, the soft punch of the bass, the steady, hypnotic spin of the turntable or album covers the size of a children’s book? It’s a lost art, really, the manipulation of grooved vinyl, pouring songs back and forth into one another so they wash over the dance floor as one never-ending wave—or cutting sound into a thousand patterned pieces, amplifying the ecstatic flicker of fingertips for all to hear. Music nowadays seems like it happens in a digital fog; the gears of our listening devices are atomized and hidden behind an opaque plastic shell, the “search” for music no more engaging than email, entire collections measured in weeks and months existing only as fragments on a magnet. That a select few still burden themselves with crate after crate of LPs and 45s, boxes of cables, mixers and, of course, the heavy motors of two direct-drive turntables, all for the sake of bringing a good time to anyone who shows up, a chance to connect spiritually to something that drives the entire universe—is nothing short of a miracle. (more…)