Tucked into the established community of Inglewood lives Recordland, one of Calgary’s longest running record shops.

Recordland first opened its doors in the 80s, but it has been a concept since the 60s. Owner Eraz Cohen says that the store was born out of his father’s deep-rooted love for music. “He bought records before he bought furniture,” he says. “Music was just in his blood.”

The store has been at the forefront of Calgary’s music scene for decades. “When everybody was chasing the CD dream, we were buying everybody’s record collection,” says Cohen.

 

 

As record stores across the country were closing their doors in the early 2000s, Recordland stayed standing. “This place survived with just the diehards,” says Austin Gies, Cohen’s self-described right-hand man.

Behind the counter, Cohen and Gies make for an unlikely but natural duo. Gies is younger, but he shares the same passion for music as Cohen. The two work together processing new stock and handling the steady stream of customers.

Stepping into the store, it’s immediately clear that this isn’t your average record shop. The walls are covered in new releases, posters, and small murals, while the aisles are made up of bins of vinyl.

Continuing into the 'Vinyl Room’, you’ll find shelves organized first by genre and then alphabetically. There are records from floor to ceiling, all waiting to be picked through.

“Our favourite things are the zero Google hits records,” says Cohen. “They’ve never been put out on the internet, so they’re still precious.”

Beyond the impressive record selection, rows of CDs take up half of the store. There are thousands, spanning across every era of music. You’ll find everything from Arcade Fire to Slipknot. And that’s before even considering the warehouse, which is home to over 500,000 other CDs and records.

Survival has never been something that worried Cohen. For him, Recordland exists because physical media offers something that streaming can’t. “Streaming is like living in a room surrounded by white walls,” he says. Recordland is the opposite of that.  Every shelf and bin is a reminder that music is meant to be discovered, not handed to you. “When you look at my record collection, that’s my personality,” he said.

The most surprising shift has been the people coming in the store. “I see parents coming in with their kids to buy records,” says Cohen. “Our generation never did that. If we went to a record store, we flew solo.” A new generation is discovering physical music, and not in a way Cohen had expected.

Recordland has survived it all; the vinyl era, the CD boom and the age of streaming, and Cohen has no plans of going anywhere. “I plan to unload as many records as possible,” he says with a grin. “We got caught up in the digital world for so long, then we realized it doesn’t have much to offer. Unless you want to be surrounded by white walls, which is boring.”

 

Story and Photography by Natalia Suk