One of the smartest books we've ever seen on album cover art – a lavish full color volume that not only presents loads of classic images, but also has plenty to say about them as well! The book is a bit smaller than LP format – maybe 8" square overall – but it's filled with loads of full page reproductions of classic hi fi, bachelor pad, and mood music album covers – most with a facing page of test that really examines the images, and also offers up other historical details too! The authors really follow a direction that's inspirational – treating these album covers not as kitsch, but as a rich document of midcentury America at the crossroads – full of deeper meaning if you know how to read things the right way. The book features chapters that include "Let's Have a Dinner Party", "Music For Hi Fi Living", "Cuba", "Airlines", "Adventures In Sound", "Sound Tour", and "Capitol Of The World" – and the hardcover volume is 420 pages, full color, with great notes at the end! Book

An incredible look at the format of vinyl – put together by a guy who's got one of the hippest record collections we've ever seen! John Corbett's been writing about music, art, and other formats for decades – but his real labor of love is vinyl records – a format he continued to embrace even at the height of the CD era – so much so that he talked Downbeat magazine into letting him write a special column on musical delights that had never made it to the digital format! Corbett helped plenty of music get reissued on CD himself – thanks to countless label projects – but he also always held a special place in his heart for the kinds of records that never got reissued – and those are the sorts of titles featured here – a massive run of music that runs from jazz to funk, American and European, totally obscure to completely common – presented beautifully together in this massive book! The volume doesn't just bring together Corbett's columns, but also offers up full color reproductions of all the record covers, along with a few other details too – to support efforts on dozens of artists – a huge list that includes Melvin Jackson, Bill Leslie, Black Grass, Night Blooming Jazzmen, Phil Seamen, Khan Jamal, Klaus Doldinger, The Mad-Hatters, Tommy Jones, Guy Warren, The Three Souls, United Front, Johnny Lytle, London Experimental Jazz Quartet, Paul Smoker, AK Salim, Noah Howard, Jack Wilson, and many others – a good number of whom have yet to be reissued. The book is wonderful – and Corbett's longtime declaration of being a vinyl freak is more important than ever, given the rebirth of the medium! Book is 250 pages, softcover, with color images. Book

You may not know the name of Barney Bubbles, but you're likely to have seen his artwork – important images that graced key records in the post-punk years – vinyl from Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Devo, Hawkwind, and dozens of others – all presented here in very vivid color! Bubbles actually got his start in the prog years – and this book goes way back to feature some of the gems from those years, then traces things up through the 70s, to Barney's big explosion in the latter part of the decade and beyond – a surprisingly rich history, all presented with a very strong focus on the images, including some inner record contents, mock-ups, and more! This heavy softcover edition is 240 pages in all – and full color throughout. Book

A fantastic window into the record bar scene in Japan – served up here in a beautiful publication that's filled with photos of all these cool little clubs that are stuffed full of records – dedicated to presenting quality jazz music on vinyl, over a top-notch sound system – all while also serving up great drinks and light food in an intimate setting! These aren't the kinds of clubs where DJs go nuts for dancers – and instead, the experience is very intimate, very relaxing, and very Japanese – a way of digging jazz in a public space that's beyond compare, and which is very unique to their scene. The rooms are often little temples to vinyl and jazz – filled with thousands of records in a beautiful space, as you'll see as you flip through the many full color images in the book. This first volume documents bars in and around Tokyo – special spots with names that include Mingus, Half Note, Candy, Jazz Time Disk, Brooklyn, and dozens of others – served up in a beautiful softcover edition, 140 pages, full color throughout – and stuffed with fantastic photos! Book

A fantastic window into the record bar scene in Japan – served up here in a beautiful publication that's filled with photos of all these cool little clubs that are stuffed full of records – dedicated to presenting quality jazz music on vinyl, over a top-notch sound system – all while also serving up great drinks and light food in an intimate setting! These aren't the kinds of clubs where DJs go nuts for dancers – and instead, the experience is very intimate, very relaxing, and very Japanese – a way of digging jazz in a public space that's beyond compare, and which is very unique to their scene. The rooms are often little temples to vinyl and jazz – filled with thousands of records in a beautiful space, as you'll see as you flip through the many full color images in the book. This second volume includes a great array of unique spots in Japan – clubs with names that include Blue Note Kanagawa, Billie's Bar, Clart, Jazz Bar Herbie, Jazz Time Kelly, Joe Pass, Lady Jane, Elvin, and dozens of others – all with these fantastic full color photographs, spread out over a total of 157 pages, with some text in Japanese and English. Book

A great guide for digging into the world of Japanese music from the mid 80s onward – and a book that's different than some of the more vinyl-centric disc guide, in that it focuses strongly on city pop titles that were only issued on CD! The Japanese city pop movement really got going at the start of the 80s, when vinyl and cassette were still king and queen – but it kept on going even after formats shifted – at a level that makes this book such a key document of the scene and style, which is often just tied to the vinyl market. As with other Japanese disc guides, the bulk of the text is in Japanese – which can now easily be read using Google Translate on your phone – but the book has entries for hundreds of titles, each with a full color image of the cover – which will offer up plenty of information for your digging. The book has a few other features alongside the disc listings – and is a total of 242 pages, softcover, with hundreds of full color images throughout. Book

Jazz music didn't start on vinyl – but the advent of the long-playing album really helped the music take off and grow – expanding out to much longer performances than were allowed by the 78rpm single, which in turn allowed artists to reach out to new and exciting styles from the 50s onward! The long legacy of the relationship between vinyl and jazz is explored here in ways that go beyond the simple details that most jazz record collectors already know – as Darren Mueller looks at specific case studies within the world of labels and artists to highlight some of the challenges and crossroads that helped define jazz on record. One chapter looks at the early albums of Prestige Records and some of the mistakes along the way, the recording of Duke Ellington At Newport, the 50s albums of Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley's famous live recording in San Francisco, and the recording challenges of Mingus Ah Um. There's also a great chapter on "Jazz As A Culture Of Circulation" – and the book has a discography and other details too. Softcover edition is 435 pages. Book

A guide to classical records, of sorts – but one that features older albums all picked by the well-known Japanese writer Haruki Murakami! Murakami is well-known as a lifetime lover of music, which comes through in his fiction, and which is almost more foregrounded in his essays – a body of work that's greatly expanded here – as Haruki presents full color images of treasured albums in his collection – mostly vinyl offerings from the 20th century, with a range of works that goes back to the early years of classical on mono LPs! Each cover image is presented with the label and date in English, and other details in Japanese – but you can easily use Google Translate on your phone to read the rest of these spare details, then set it to translate the longer essays that accompany the images. There's definitely more Japanese text here than in the "disc guides" we stock – but the images alone provided a great start to building a strong classical collection, guided by a true master. Softcover edition is 380 pages, with full color images throughout. Book

A guide to classical records, of sorts – but one that features older albums all picked by the well-known Japanese writer Haruki Murakami! Murakami is well-known as a lifetime lover of music, which comes through in his fiction, and which is almost more foregrounded in his essays – a body of work that's greatly expanded here – as Haruki presents full color images of treasured albums in his collection – mostly vinyl offerings from the 20th century, with a range of works that goes back to the early years of classical on mono LPs! Each cover image is presented with the label and date in English, and other details in Japanese – but you can easily use Google Translate on your phone to read the rest of these spare details, then set it to translate the longer essays that accompany the images. There's definitely more Japanese text here than in the "disc guides" we stock – but the images alone provided a great start to building a strong classical collection, guided by a true master. Softcover edition is 350 pages, with full color images throughout. Book

A surprisingly cool little book – even though you probably hardly need a guide to record collecting! That's the main framework of the book – but the contents inside are a lot more intriguing taken bit by bit – as the volume features all sorts of little sections on the rarest records of all time, a history of recorded formats, a look at quality bootlegs, unreleased projects, unusual collaborations, and lots lots more – all presented with plenty of photos and other details that are super-interesting if you're as into record collecting as we are. There's even a look at 30 different record labels – and countless other bits of useful information along the way – in a heavy softcover volume that's almost 300 pages, fully illustrated, and a lot of fun on a day when you can't make it out to the record racks for shopping in person! Book

Remember the days when hip hop was so underground, it was hard to get pressed on vinyl? And most of the audience wasn't going to play the music on CD – leaving tapes to be the main format to circulate the music back in the underground! This cool volume really digs deep into that musical moment – a cassette-sized book that offers up a guide to hundreds of rare gangsta rap cassettes – each presented with their full front artwork on the smaller pages – with English listings of the dates, title, artist, label, and location – and a bit of added text in Japanese (which you should be able to read using Google translate.) The book features listings for over 300 cassette-only releases – then also has a smaller section on the selectors' favorites at the end, plus an index of artists – all presented in a really great, all-color softcover volume! Book