The Collector
Record Collector|May 2024
Swiss-based Icelander Sunna Margrét is a rising force in experimental pop. Having begun her career as a teenager touring with electro-pop ensemble Bloodgroup, she is about to release her debut full-length solo LP, Finger on Tongue.
Sunna Margrét
The Collector

Influenced by krautrock legends CAN and Neu!, alongside outsider synth-pop artist The Space Lady and electronic music pioneers Suzanne Ciani and Eliane Radigue, her work touches on crosscutting synth-pop, reinvented trip-hop, krautrock, and experimental inspirations. She is also an accomplished visual artist, co-founding No Salad Records as a platform for avant-garde, electronic, and post-punk expression worldwide.

What do you collect, and why?

I collect what I know I will actually listen to, what sparks my interest, records that inspire me to make music. I often buy records when I go to concerts – it’s nice to support the artists directly. I enjoy a whole range of styles: experimental, psychedelic rock, punk rock, post-punk, ambient, world music, electronic, krautrock, pop, sometimes jazz, blues, folk… all sorts of directions. But preferably something I don’t already know. Yesterday I bought a new release: Vanishing Twin – Afternoon X. It had a quote from [leftfield music mag] The Wire so I gave it a listen. Now, since I began running a record label, when I’ve been personally distributing records to local stores, it’s hard to resist grabbing a record or two on the way out.

How big is your collection?

It’s tiny! Well, it depends who you ask, but for collectors, it’s tiny. Maybe 700 records ranging from 6” to 12”.

What do you think it is worth?

Probably not much… I’ve never really thought about it. I’m constantly listening to my records, day in, day out, and I know I’m probably going to listen to them until they are ruined. Some of those records are already in bad shape, a lot of them I bought for just two euros. But then, streaming music just isn’t my thing.

Denne historien er fra May 2024-utgaven av Record Collector.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra May 2024-utgaven av Record Collector.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA RECORD COLLECTORSe alt
Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
Record Collector

Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.

The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
Record Collector

"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.

David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
7"  Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound
Record Collector

7" Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound

Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
STARS ON 45s
Record Collector

STARS ON 45s

A BUNCH OF MUSICIANS - 45, COUNT 'EM! RHAPSODISE ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE SINGLE

time-read
1 min  |
September 2024
THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
Record Collector

THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT

John Coleman celebrates the great art of vinyl collecting on the 45th Anniversary of Record Collector and finds out, in an exhausting series of anxietyinducing sprees, how much vinyl you can buy today, ina variety of outlets, with 45.

time-read
2 mins  |
September 2024
Young American
Record Collector

Young American

A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
MOD ALMIGHTY
Record Collector

MOD ALMIGHTY

Steve Ellis began his career as a mod in flower-power clobber as frontman of chart-toppers Love Affair. Quitting in 1970, he worked with The Who's Roger Daltrey then gave up music to become a docker before a near-death experience. Interest in his work was rekindled after hooking up with long-time fan Paul Weller. Lois Wilson hears how his romance with music endures.

time-read
7 mins  |
September 2024
ANARCHISTS IN THE UK
Record Collector

ANARCHISTS IN THE UK

EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
The boy with the thorn in his side
Record Collector

The boy with the thorn in his side

David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
"I COULD JUST THROW MUD AT THE WALL"
Record Collector

"I COULD JUST THROW MUD AT THE WALL"

There's little sign of slowing down from the 19-year-old Pete Townshend. Currently on the go: multi-media project The Age Of Anxiety; a dance production of Quadrophenia; and Pete Townshend Live In Concert 1985-2001, a 14-disc boxset of his solo in-concert recordings. Not, he admits, that his every whim and fancy are worth deeper exploration. \"Some of them are good ideas, some of them are pretty dumb,\"

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024