To help Sri Lankans ride the wave of Vinyl’s Revival, Zeppelin, the suppliers of premiums and souvenirs have opened up Sri Lanka’s first store dedicated exclusively to selling Vinyl Records, Turntables and Accessories. At a time when entire libraries of music can be stuffed onto speck-sized memory cards or accessed via the omniscient cloud, vinyl brings a solid, physical presence to a music collection. Thumbing through the crates at Zeppelin, you’ll see contemporary records such as, Ed Sheeran’s Divide and Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams sitting beside classics like Bob Marley’s Legend, Eric Clapton’s Unplugged and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, together with the OST of Footloose, Jesus Christ Superstar and La La Land. The range of music at the store moves across all genres and are carefully selected from discerning merchants in the Netherlands.
Audiophiles in Sri Lanka have shown considerable enough buying power to bring the medium back to life. Vinyl Revival parties happen in Colombo too, with a vibrant community of buyers and vendors in attendance to share their love for the sleek black disc. The modern turntables on offer at Zeppelin at Kirula Road, Colombo 5 come with features that make them more appealing to the millennial crowd. Apart from the solid Belt-Driven and Direct-Drive models they also have portable briefcase-sized units with Bluetooth connectivity and USB functionality.