Shopping for vinyl from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv

“I love flipping through vinyl — the sound it makes and the tactile feeling of it,” says Toronto native Mike Milosh, better known as the intoxicating voice behind R&B’s Rhye. Milosh — who just released a new album, Home, to critical acclaim — grew up loving now-bygone city stalwarts like Penguin Music and Vortex Records, where he spent hours wandering the aisles digging through piles of LPs searching for new music. Now, as a touring musician (pre-pandemic, of course), he skips the typical tourist attractions and looks for the coolest record shops he can find so he can get a feel for whatever city he’s in. “In São Paulo, Brazil, I found a Japanese tea spot that also had vinyl, and it was an amazing way to just enjoy hanging out,” he explains. “I found something similar in Seoul, South Korea. I couldn’t even read its sign, but it was so cool to have tea, read magazines, and look through their vinyl collection.” Here are some of his other favourite spots.

Romano (Tel Aviv, Israel)

“In Tel Aviv, there’s this complex called Romano — it’s kind of like a big apartment building. In it, there’s this pizza place and a small record shop beside it — I don’t even know if it has a name — where people just congregate and hang out while they’re waiting for their table. It’s really interesting because people are just playing records and it has this really warm, homey vibe, and everyone’s really friendly and fun. I go whenever I’m in Tel Aviv because it has a real sense of community curation.”

Amoeba Music (Los Angeles, California)

“Amoeba Records is amazing. You see their bumper stickers on people’s cars all the time while you’re driving around L.A., and when you finally go there, you’re like, ‘Oh wow. I get it.’ It just has so many records. When my first record came out, I rushed over to see if they had it and I ended up spending, like, three hours there buying others. I really like the experience of going there: it’s kind of dingy and it’s a cultural [hub] in the city. L.A. has a really big music scene, so it’s cool to have a record store around that [stocks] indie records.”

Potato Head Garage (Jakarta, Indonesia)

“I love social places that are like apex points in a city. I’ve found a ton of places like this [while travelling], I just don’t always remember their names! There was this place in Jakarta called Potato Head Garage that was like that: it had burgers and vinyl. There’s something so nostalgic about the idea of sitting in a café that also caters to music lovers, especially now.”