20% OFF VINYL THROUGHOUT APRIL

Record Store Day is officially on Saturday 22 April, but Readings is celebrating all month long with 20% off vinyl.

Handpicked by our passionate music team, our vinyl collection includes old favourites alongside terrific new releases. Come visit us in-store to chat with our specialists in person and complete your own collection.

The sale runs from 1 to 30 April 2017 at all Readings shops (except Readings Kids and Readings Malvern). The offer only applies to vinyl currently in stock, and is not available online. The offer excludes all Record Store Day releases.

EIGHT AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS TO SUPPORT THIS MONTH

We love being able to share local talent with you, and this month, we’ve put together a list of eight brilliant releases from Australian artists that we can’t stop listening to.

The eight albums include:

• Staring at the Starry Ceiling by Charm of Finches
• The Leaving by Rough River
• Half Mile Harvest by the Tesky Brothers
• After a Time by Holly Throsby
• Glassellland by Jordie Lane and the Sleepers
• Middle Kids by Middle Kids
• Wide Asleep by Sophie Hutchings
• Sleepless Girls by Harry Howard and the NDE

Find out more about these eight albums here.

CALLING ALL CLASSICAL MUSIC LOVERS

Our classical music specialists recommend three new releases this month: J.S. Bach: Trios by Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer, Henriette: The Princess of the Viol by Maddelena Del Gobbo and The Spirit And The Maiden by Muses Trio.

Read their reviews here.

In April, we’re also offering special prices on two classical albums, only while stock lasts.

We have very limited stock of Maria João Pires’s Complete Chamber Music Recordings available for $44.95 (). This 12-disc set features Pires’s classic performances with Auguste Dumay, Jian Wang, António Meneses, Pavel Gomziakov and Renaud Capuçon.

We also have Paganini Fantasy available for $12.95 (). This release sees serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović pay tribute to the great Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini.

UPCOMING EVENTS

We’re delighted to be hosting three intimate bookshop gigs at our St Kilda shop with wonderful local musicians.

Melbourne sisters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, aka Charm of Finches, will be appearing at 6.30pm on Wednesday 5 April. These talented young musicians have been likened to artists as diverse as Danish chamber songstress Agnes Obel, First Aid Kit and Gillian Welch.

Melbourne singer–songwriter Kate Skinner, aka Rough River, will be appearing at 6.30pm on Thursday 13 April. Her music quietly aches with tales of love gone by and a yearning for the natural world.

And to celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday 22 April, local souls/blues band The Teskey Brothers will be dropping by at 12pm to play a few songs from their latest album, Half Mile Harvest.

All musical performances are free, and there’s no need to book.

STAFF PICKS

Mike Skinner is a music specialist at our St Kilda shop. Here are five albums he’s loving this month.

1. Fifty Song Memoir by The Magnetic Fields
Stephen Merritt returns with a concept album perhaps even more sprawling and ambitious than 1999’s 69 Love Songs. With a song for every year of Merritt’s prolific life, this is classic Magnetic Fields – wordy, irreverent, smart and often hilarious.

2. RTJ3 by Run the Jewel
Killer Mike and EL-P have created another excellent album full of politically-charged rhymes and dense, psychedelic production. Released unexpectedly in late 2016, it might just be the first – and fiercest – protest album of the Trump era. RTJ3 was always going to be a deeply political affair, but the parlous state of American politics in 2017 makes this essential duo feel more vital than ever.

3. The Navigator by Hurray for the Riff Raff
On The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff create a diverse musical narrative that very closely mirrors the life of Alynda Lee Segarra – the band’s songwriter and key creative force. Segarra deftly absorbs and reproduces the rich tradition of Americana through her own unique lens, amplifying the manifold voices of the oppressed along the way. In my view, this is her finest record to date.

4. Once Upon a Time in the West by Ennio Morricone
Morricone’s vast back catalog and compositional genius can feel intimidating, but Once Upon a Time in the West is something I’ll always return to. All the hallmarks of the genre he pretty much created are here: distorted, dirty guitar lines cutting through soaring strings, choruses of weird staccato vocals, the brilliant and overbearing menace of it all.

5. Another Green World by Brian Eno
On his third solo outing, Eno moved away from the abrasive and angular to something more lulling and melodious, laying the foundation for his ambient works. No track embodies this more than the album’s centerpiece, ‘The Big Ship’. The track is three minutes of slowly building synthesizer, Casio drums and warm, fuzzy guitar that never fails to move me in some way.