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Record Store Day 2021


Sunday, June 13th, was Record Store Day 2021 in Japan. I took the following Monday to make a trip to Tower Vinyl in Shinjuku.


“Tower Vinyl” is a recent addition to the large Tower Records Shinjuku branch. The store spans four floors with Tower Vinyl being the highest. Tower Vinyl is Tower Records’ first vinyl record exclusive store in Japan.

You’d think that Tower Vinyl would be Japanese record heaven, but most of the store is western music. The new Japanese records are contained to a pretty small section and they have a sizable “used” Japanese section. I couldn’t find much that appealed to me in the used section, to be honest. It looked like a lot of enka from the 80’s.

Actually, I was most excited to visit after seeing some great deals on Tower Records’ online store. Some of the records on my hit-list were on sale for around 80-90% off. But when I found one of the records I wanted with a full price sticker, I asked the staff if the online sale prices applied in store, but apparently they didn’t. Oh well. I ordered the sale records that were still available on the site during my train ride back home. 😆

I didn’t leave empty-handed, though. I bought Helsinki Lambda Club’s album “Eleven plus two/Twelve plus one”, which was released for Record Store Day 2021. I’ll definitely be playing some tracks off it on the show soon. ✌️


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