Arjun who used to intern at Pagal Records in HKV tells me about this band called Panchiko who was a forgotten obscure act until a CD pressed in their teenage youth found its way onto 4chan and eventually ended up becoming popular to millions of strangers online.
Only thirty copies of their CD had been pressed but one of them had been enough to turn them cult.
‘I feel like the beauty of being a vinyl artist is the sheer joy of having a true archive. There’s a charm to possessing a book, a song or a photograph in its physical form.’ Donnie tells me – he used to manage Pagal Records and currently fronts an emo rock act called The Monschees which sounds a tad bit similar to Panchiko. He dreams of releasing an EP on vinyl someday as he strums his guitar in BigFuz – a jampad & record store in Safdarjung.
Bijoy who runs BigFuz has multiple copies of Parikrama’s Live at Mahindra Independence Rock 2022. There’s a signed copy of Future Remains by Hollowship which is a four-piece psychedelic rock band from Gothenburg who once came to perform at Summer House Cafe.
The other records that my eyes shift towards when I am at his studio in Safdarjung are Fire and Water by Free and Tonight I’m Yours by Rod Stewart.
Bijoy has one weird quality as a vinyl seller. He gets attached to some records and refuses to sell. ‘Let me listen to this for a while.’ He smiles sometimes if you ask him for the price of a product instead of selling.
Away from Safdarjung and HKV – there is Oddbird Theatre in Dhan Mill where I had the chance to witness a Vinyl Listening Session for Tarun Balani’s latest release.
‘What made you choose to release music on vinyl?’ We ask Balani.
‘The first and foremost reason to release music on vinyl is to give listeners the true and the highest audio quality that I can provide. I want listeners to experience my music just the way I experienced it while making it and producing it.’ Balani tells…
‘The second reason would be that my music is inspired by a lot of visual imagery. There’s a lot of sonic storytelling and for my audience to experience that it’s best when it’s printed – when they can hold it – it’s just tactile experience.’
‘It wasn’t exactly my decision to press vinyl.’ Sijya reveals. ‘I didn’t even think of it. It’s the label – One Little Independent Records. They do vinyl for every release. They told me that they will be doing vinyl so I was really excited because I didn’t think that would happen for a release so early in my career.’ Sijya designed the sleeve of the vinyl herself using old photos from her family archive.
RECORD STORES AND RECORD COLLECTORS
The labels play a significant part in these choices but without physical record stores there would be no awareness at all of such efforts. Sijya’s Leather and Brass EP had a Vinyl Listening Session at Digging in India on 6th July 2025.
Away from the momentum of these events lay a couple of copies of Four Pair of Jeans by That Boy Roby at Pagal Records in HKV. That Boy Roby is an experimental rock act from Chandigarh that Shamikh – a vinyl collector from Noida would otherwise have never heard of if not for the chance encounter in one of the crates.
‘First time I didn’t get it. The second time I was like this is almost cool. By the third time I was a fan already.’ The lure of music on vinyl is this sublime effect of listening to an album from top to bottom so many times until you completely fall in love with it.
‘It is not about that album itself but about a particular time in my life – the smell of which the playing of this brings back alive.’ Says Shamikh looking at his copy of Four Pair of Jeans by That Boy Roby that lies in his home today tucked peacefully between three LPs of Peter Cat and two LPs of Tarun Balani.
‘If my house burns down in a fire and I have a chance to leave – I will stay and go to ash with my records.’ Nishant has got records signed by Seedhe Maut, Prabhdeep and many more so it makes sense…
Samantak is another seasoned collector from Bangalore who tells me. ‘I have around 250 records. Tough to pick a favorite but I’d probably choose Ganavya’s first album – like the sky I’ve been too quiet.
I’ll tell you about a few more…’
1. Advaita – Grounded in Space
2. The Bombay Royale – Run Kitty Run
3. Disenfranchised In India – a crazy compilation of truly underground bands in India – mostly punk, hardcore etc
4. The famous self-titled album by Avial
5. The Best of Soulmate
6. Akela by Ankur Tewari
7. Usual suspects like PCRC, Anoushka Shankar & Parekh and Singh…
The challenges are still there
‘I take great pains in travelling to New York and recording with my engineer John Davis who is a Grammy award winning artist and works at The Bunker Studio in New York.’ Tarun Balani shares…
‘Vinyl is expensive and quite slow to produce. I had to wait almost three and a half years before I got signed to Berthold Records. My record Dharma was ready and already produced by 2016 but I only got signed in 2018 and the vinyl came out in 2019. Time can be a trade-off. I did lose a lot of time in waiting around too in getting a label that will back me up and that will believe in my vision and spend time and money to release music exactly the way I want to but that’s the trade-off one has to make sometimes. Typically, my label produces about anything between 150 – 300 copies per record.’
MANUFACTURERS
We got in touch with Saji Pillai of Samanvii – India’s first vinyl record manufacturing plant in over four decades to understand the behind the scenes of the process…
Saji informed us that for a standard 12-inch – the cost for pressing 100 to 300 copies typically ranges between ₹800 to ₹1,400 per unit.
‘Start small — 100 to 300 copies — to test demand.’ Saji suggests. ‘Consider preorders or crowdfunding to offset costs and build early excitement. Promote your release as a limited-edition experience — it adds emotional value.’
On Streaming
‘I don’t want to villainize streaming. It’s something that I do myself. I also stream music.’ Balani continues after a pause. ‘But do you want to as a listener go a step further? As an artist I imagine people who are interested in my story… who are interested in going beyond the surface level and digging a little bit deeper into what the storytelling has to offer and what my artistry has to offer… I think those are the kind of people who are going to be buying my records and are buying my records and hopefully will continue to have them in their collections for a long time to come… The reason I purchase records from artists that I really dig and admire is to continue to have that experience with the music and with the artist’s journey and have them as a part of my collection forever.’ He concludes…
