Vinyl is DEAD!' they said, those plump red faced music industry men who were clutching a Witney Houston CD in one hand and a mobile phone the size of France in the other. On the face of it, they were right too. I mean, let's face it, who would really want music in such an outdated format anymore? Who would forgo the crystal clear CD sound, for music with background noise reminiscent of someone cooking sausages on a gas cooker, all hisses and crackles and farts? Who would discard the virtually indestructible CD in favour of a slab of plastic that you could scratch just by looking at it, and that bent out of shape if you left it too near the radiator?

Yet, 25 years on from the birth of the CD, vinyl still hasn't disappeared. All of the major labels still produce their most important releases in vinyl format. While not produced in the numbers they once were in it's hey day, vinyl can definitely be said to be making a come back. The recent White Stripes release "The Denial Twist" sold 5500 copies on 7-inch vinyl alone and this was enough to break the single into the top ten charts in the UK. In some market sectors, such as dance, hip-hop, etc, sales of vinyl have actually overtaken those of CD, and according to figures from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the number of 7-inch singles sold rose from 178,831 in 2001 to 1,072,608 in 2005. Sales of turntables continue to rise, and a quick search on Ebay for Vinyl Records' will give you literally thousands items to browse. What is it about vinyl that retains a demand for its existence? Who is buying vinyl records?

In order to answer these questions I offer myself as a case study. On a cold and wet Saturday afternoon some three years ago I decided to sort through my own collection of vinyl in order to make space for ...well ...to be perfectly honest, a hugely impressive lava lamp I took a fancy to while on holiday in Italy. I sat there and started to look through records I hadn't touched for over 20 years, with the initial aim of dumping most of them. Without playing a single one, I found myself on a four hour trip through the memories of my youth. For those few hours I was transported back to that dark bedroom in my parent's house, where the walls were covered in posters, where my clothes were carefully and very precisely maintained in a big pile on the floor, and where unmentionable things were stored secretly under the bed. In those days I spent so much time, not just listening to the music, but carefully

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