Ranjona Banerji | Hear This! Vinyl Is Back, and Music Is Cool Again!

I signed up for an experience last week, which both surprised me and outdid my expectations in itself, but also in the reactions I got from other people. I fully expected to be laughed at and mocked or chastised. Instead, those I described my experience to, reacted with wonder.

I attended a “listening room” event. An independent coffee roastery in Dehradun, run by a group of young people (this means anyone younger than me), which caters to people interested in music. It was a planned evening, with food done by a local well-known chef and was not cheap.

But it was mind-blowing, even if it was simple.

The band chosen for the event was Pink Floyd, with some explanations from the organisers as we went through the band’s music, played on vinyl on a great sound system. The room was small, enclosed and soundproofed. The equipment was great quality. Basically, you listened to the music in a dark space, bar some visual effects. It was, to use that much cliched word, “immersive”. Each listening session spread over the evening was between 30 and 45 minutes, with short 15-minute breaks in between. No phones, no distractions, just music.

Because it sounds a little poncy or at least fussy and stylised when you first hear of it, I was prepared after the event to be excoriated by my friends. These were the arguments I had worked out: you could have sat at home and listened to music, we used to take records to friends’ homes and listen together (only one person said this), you wasted your money on something very simple and so on.

I had my defences ready, which turned out to be unnecessary. Because 99 per cent of the people I spoke to were fascinated. All of them were my age and older. And they all wanted to be part of such an experience.

It raised a few questions about what interests us and the life we lead, most of all our inability to disconnect from distractions, particularly the need for constant communication and short bursts of entertainment. The experience of a listening room is not the same as watching a film in a theatre, although similar. There is not story, no dialogue, no thrills and no food. It is just listening. It is a solitary experience enjoyed with other people.

Now don’t imagine I’m going to walk down the road to spiritual enlightenment and self-knowledge: I am not that kind of a person. But it is an all-encompassing experience, with subliminal elements. You want to listen, because you have chosen to and have to listen, because of the circumstances. Nuances of music easily lost in the hurly-burly of the outside world are clearer now. There is also the undeniable romance of nostalgia for those old enough. The scratch of the needle on the vinyl and the reality of vinyl recordings — sounds smoothed out by digitisation are now alive. I must make clear this is not an age thing — 40 per cent of my fellow listeners were much younger than the old brigade. There is also the pleasure of meeting people who love music, or your kind of music or any kind of music. And here, nothing matters except that common interest. It has taken me many years to confront my fears of being thrust into a group of strangers. And for the most part, it’s been a liberating experience.

Listening rooms are neither new nor unique. They appeared in 1920s Japan, with a suitably expressing Japanese name: onigaku kissa or kissaten, a music café or coffee house. These came up a century ago, when live music was banned in Japan, to listen to classical music and jazz. Perhaps the only constant that remains is vinyl and in our local listening room, a preference for jazz.

I would do it again in a heartbeat and I still want to understand why. Why for myself, and why for most people I spoke to. Is it the lack of forced social interaction? Is it the reclaiming of pleasurable isolation in a distracted and distracting world? Is it the rediscovery of sound in the midst of cacophony? Is it the thrill of surrender to your senses? This is not after all one of those pseudo spiritual experiences — forest-bathing or playing whale songs or whatever. Nor is it comparable to the simple pleasure — increasingly a privilege — of listening to birdsong early in the morning. There’s an odd forced element to it, which despite the classroom rules, actually enhances the experience.

The choice of music itself did not really matter, enjoyable though it was. Pink Floyd demands a lot from the listener, it is disturbing in music and lyrics and conception. To listen to it together is also an art and a challenge, you have to be like-minded in a sense and prepared for what is ahead of you.

But frankly any music would have a similar effect. It is the method which creates the enjoyment. We have lost the art of the “long form”. For those who remember the days of record players or even cassette players, it was very cumbersome to skip from song to song. Stop, lift the needle, go to the next song or stop, fast forward and so on. All manually, no remotes in those days. You just listened to the whole thing. Each album designed and planned that way as well, by the artistes and possibly in some cases, the studios. So listening was, by default if not design, an “immersive” experience. One you put the record on, you were committed.

Today’s convenience has its benefits. But it has reduced listening to shuffle play and an algorithm’s reading of your patterns. You no longer go on the same journey of discovery.

What is even more welcome is that you go back to the past, using older methods, but in a new interpretation provided by the young. It underlines once more that beauty is there to be appreciated by all of us and perhaps, we underestimate the importance of fresh eyes on something we thought we knew so well.