LATEST ADDITIONS

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson has been on a deeply entrenched spiritual quest of late. On Tull’s latest and 23rd studio album overall, RökFlöte, which was released on vinyl via InsideOut Music on April 21, he addresses the tenets of Norse paganism. In a recent Zoom interview with AP editor Mike Mettler, Jethro Tull’s once and future leader discusses the inner workings of RökFlöte, when he finally felt like Jethro Tull had gotten the right mix of their music on vinyl, and how the act of breathing is vitally important when it comes to both his singing and his flute playing. Read on to glean all of Ian Anderson’s earthly vinyl proclivities. . .

Last week, AXPONA ruled large in Chicagoland, and we tasked our main product reviewer Ken Micallef to shoot as much video footage as he could of all the cool turntables he came across at the show. Check out the videoclip that’s embedded within this story to see a cavalcade of great turntables, as well as some interesting cleaning products in action, a few new cartridges and tonearms — and some choice vinyl too. . .

Is it any wonder why something called Vinyl Obsession instantly became our favorite TV show? Airing on Sunday nights at 8:30 p.m. EST on AXS TV, this half-hour LP-centric show follows a pair of musicians and/or rock-adjacent celebs shopping for their five favorite albums at Grimey’s in Nashville. Naturally, we had to find out how Vinyl Obsession came to be, so AP editor Mike Mettler got on Zoom with executive producer and AXS TV VP of programming Katie Daryl to get all the LP-obsessive details. Read on to see what Daryl had to say about how the idea for Vinyl Obsession moved from brainstorm into reality, who her main dream guest would be for Season 2, and what her own personal top LP choices are. . .

AXPONA is officially in the books, and what an amazing show it was! Let’s all do it again next year, shall we? As mentioned here last week, our full show report is forthcoming in both text and video form. In the meantime, I’d like to draw our collective analog attention to another cool product seen at the big show — namely, the SOTA Quasar turntable. Read on to learn more about the Quasar and all its earthly-yet-cosmically cool features. . .