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MATS LARSSON
@blooob_vinyl
He talked to me about many bands that started him off on his musical journey however its genres such as Krautrock that he notes as being the most influential on his musical tastes and bands like Kraftwerk & Neu that have been constant favourites throughout his life.
Mats seriously has one of the best record collections iv'e had the privilege talking about and Mat’s himself is one of the most entertaining and engaging collectors iv'e talked to putting this project together.
Your collection is incredibly varied and spreads across a number of genres, but is there a genre that you keep coming back to in particular?
Yeah i would say i keep coming back to a few genres that i have listened for a long time, since i was in my younger years; and thats Krautrock and Goth / Industrial music and Post Punk. When i first started becoming interested in music seriously my friends and i would listen to a lot of bands and buy a lot of records from these genres from bands like The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, The Sound, Joy Division and The Birthday Party. We then progressed onto listening to Krautrock with bands like Can, Kraftwerk and Neu. We were basically a group of friends just inspiring each other and enjoying listening to music.
When did you start collecting records?
Well i was born in 1970 so i was getting vinyl records for my birthday from an early age. I also picked them up on trips to the store with my mother as she was buying groceries i was asking her to buy me a record. But of course i wasn't really “collecting” shall we say at that time so i think i really started when i was a bit older, around 10 years old. And what got me really interested in collecting was comic books and a magazine called “Mad Magazine” and the silly humour in it. And that lead me onto watching silly music videos and in particular by a band called Devo and then onto Talking Heads with David Byrne wearing his big suit and acting funny and quirky. And then of course Madness fit into that funny kind of music video genre. And it was those 3 bands that got me hooked, mainly on their image, and then i started to listen to their music and pick up their records. And it was a stroke of luck that the bands produced great music. I could have been watching videos for bands that made terrible music! And those 3 bands are still among my favourite bands in my collection today. However around the time i started to collect it was very hard to get records in Sweden so we had to use a mail order system from record shops in the UK where you sent money and they sent records over to you. So to get your hands on records that i wanted and liked in Sweden was really quite difficult back in the early days of collecting for me.
Have you continuously collected vinyl since an early age then? Or stopped when the CD era came in and started up again during this current vinyl revival?
Yeah i would say i paused collecting vinyl when the CD generation started and began buying music on CD. This was in the late 80s’ till the mid 00s’ really and then went back to vinyl. So iv'e spent a lot of time going back and trying to buy the albums in that period on vinyl. I sold some of my vinyl in that time when i had stopped collecting including some very rare records looking back now. These included several first presses of albums by the German band Can. I also sold my Sonic Youth collection which again looking back was a terrible mistake! Then after a while i got fed up with CD’s and the concept of collecting them and i think that was when streaming came along. I found it pointless to just keep collecting the CD as an object! I ended up going back to vinyl because i felt that they stood the test of time. And i enjoyed owning and looking at vinyl more than CD’s. So looking back i have albums that iv'e bought maybe 3 times; first on vinyl, then on CD and then on vinyl again!
And the first record you bought?
Yeah that was a record by Madness called “The Rise and Fall” which has great tracks like “Our House” on. And that record came out in 1982 and that was the first record i bought with my own money. I would have been around 12 years old at the time.
How many records are in your collection?
I haven't counted them up for a long time but i would say approximately 3500LP’s and 12” singles. I also have a couple of thousand CD’s in my basement aswell but got rid of the cases for them and put them in sleeves to take up less space!
As record collectors, we tend to spend a lot of time admiring the artwork of record sleeves. Do you feel sleeves are just as important as the record?
Absolutely yes they are! I was always into illustrations and art when i was growing up and carried that through my later life with hobbies like painting and that has made me appreciate and fall in love with the artwork of records! It was the aesthetics of a record that made me begin collecting as a kid really. There was an Abba record i got for Christmas when i was around 5 years old that i kept looking at and i think thats really when it started for me. The artwork was designed by a Swedish illustrator and i think its fantastic! I think its the same with a lot of collectors, they enjoy the whole package of a record from the artwork on the cover to the packaging of the record and then the record itself and how it sounds!
All of us record collectors always have an extensive wants list! Whats on yours and how many records are on it?
Yeah i think i have around 3000 records on my wants list! It just never ends for me! There are always so many records i want. I would say that top of the list is a first US pressing of “The Velvet Underground & Nico” without the banana peeled off it. But thats going to be almost impossible to find for a good price! I have to stick to my budget remember!
How about your best bargain find? What record has that been?
Yeah they are been a lot but what im most happy about is my Lee Hazelwood collection. I started buying his records in the late 80s’ and now have all of his records in my collection. Ive bought all his records, about 40, in bargain bins for very cheap so im really happy about that.
Will your collection be inherited by your daughter when you go?
Yes of course im hoping so but im trying not to force music on her so she can discover what she likes by herself but yes id certainly want her to get a chance to take care of all these records but my god there are so many for her to look after! It will be a big challenge for the poor girl! Its all catalogued in discogs though so its all there to see how much things are worth.
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