While the resurgence of vinyl can be seen discussed on almost every major music or financial blog available online, there is a subculture of the vinyl world that goes largely unrecognized. Under the news of manufacturing plants getting clogged with orders and the countless statistics on sales, there is a group of people known as crate diggers. You can find these dedicated archivists flipping through boxes of records and coughing on freshly kicked-up dust in the most obscure places. They aren’t looking for anything in particular, only the most obscure and rare vinyl from around the world. These vinyl collectors find solace in discovering off-kilter European disco and largely uncirculated Japanese garage rock in order to build a collection that turns into a singing museum.
Thankfully, two crate diggers have joined forces out in San Francisco and combined their love of music to create a digging-friendly environment for the city. Offshore Sounds, The bay area’s newest record shop, was started by Peter Arko and Dylan Davis and only opened its doors in 2022 at the 710 Collective on historic Haight Street. Their relationship started prior to their brick-and-mortar endeavor, the duo got their start hosting Globe Spinners, a record fair that was quick to become a must-see in the city of San Francisco. Arko and Davis saw their army of crate diggers growing at every Globe Spinners and decided they needed a home base. That home base now holds hundreds of records from across the globe, everything from maxi-singles performed by defunct bands to albums that have been out of circulation for decades.
Glide had the pleasure of exchanging some emails with Arko and Davis to discuss their passion for vinyl, the history of Globe Spinners/Offshore Sounds, and how everything came together.
You guys started out with Globe Spinners, a record fair. What is it like running a brick and mortar compared to a pop-up like that?
Peter: It’s a lot more involved, but the fact that we are located in another storefront with numerous other independent sellers means that it is perhaps a bit less so compared to a dedicated brick-and-mortar. The fact that Globe Spinners happens four times a year means that we have fairly long breaks in between planning and preparation for the events. The shop, on the other hand, is open daily and we are working every day to ensure there is a significant stream of new records there every week, while we ourselves drop in often during the week to clean up before and after weekend rushes. Not staffing the place ourselves means that it frees up a lot of time to do what we love most: dig for records. We also plan to do more record-related events there in the future.
In an interview with 48Hills, Dylan mentioned Groove Merchant as one of their home stores, what shops did you guys grow up going to and did they have any inspiration on Offshore Sounds?
Dylan: While my local record shop growing up did have a lot of impact on how I look for music, it required you to set aside a whole afternoon to go through the selection, which was very sprawling. That’s a task I totally still love, but we are aiming for something different. By contrast, our shop is quite small and curated. In terms of the kind of music we feature, I took a lot of cues from Dizonord, Gemini Cricket, and Listen!, in Paris, whose owners I became acquainted with while living there in 2018-2019. I appreciated their emphasis on having the widest possible latitude of musical references from around the world and their different approaches to sharing and showcasing them. Each has its own sensibility, totally unique, and we wanted to create something similar, by starting small at first, aiming to feature an eclectic selection of records that are harder to find in the states.
Peter: When I moved back to SF in 2009, I lived close to Aquarius (RIP). I always appreciated their diverse stock, record reviews, and fondness for the local music scene which I was involved with in my 20s. I tend to gravitate towards smaller shops that feel accessible and carry a mix of sought-after and lesser-known titles. Even long-time collectors get interested in popular records at different periods in their life, so it’s always good to have a balance.
In that same interview, you mention how your curation process allows you to continue to discover new music from decades ago. How do you balance feeding your interest in one particular realm of music while still keeping your stock refreshed with albums from other parts of the world?
Dylan: It is often a difficult process, but maintaining an interesting selection of records I think involves recognizing what gaps we need to fill musically, stylistically, etc, without prioritizing keeping any single artist or title continually in stock. While it would be great to always have records by Tim Maia or Masayoshi Takanaka in stock, the reality is it is hard to keep them on the shelves. It’s also the case that we want to have a selection that will appeal to those collectors who may be after particular titles, but also open to being caught off guard by something they haven’t encountered before, and didn’t expect to be drawn to. This latter approach is what I gravitate toward as a digger, and so our shop somewhat naturally leans in that direction. We are trying to keep things as fresh as possible by having a constant stream of records we’ve dug up locally, combined with a steady supply of stuff coming in from other countries, or elsewhere, including our own collections. My outlook is that we, as record dealers are temporary custodians of interesting records, so we tend to sell records that many others would probably keep, and the stuff we do hang onto may one day appear in our bins unless it’s truly irreplaceable or we are very unlikely to ever see it again.
Is there any connective tissue that strings the LPs you sell together?
Dylan: I think the connective tissue is more in the ethos behind the records, in wanting to establish and maintain a range of records that elicit certain sensations, feelings, and often uncategorizable attractions, for us as listeners that have an open orientation to music in general. While we do have records categorized by genre in the store to aid potential buyers, I’m often excited most by records that transcend genre in some way, and we have many examples of those in the shop. Of course, the deeper you go in exploring musical traditions and genres, the more likely you are to encounter examples of people crossing over or defying those boundaries altogether. In some cases, the genre has come to be defined by exactly that pursuit (jazz, for instance). Essentially, though, we want to provide interesting records that can expand musical horizons without presuming a particular starting point on the part of our customers, and anyone hearing A Love Supreme for the first time will be affected by it.
Are there any crazy stories you guys have from digging around the internet/old collections trying to find a particular pressing? What are the most extreme lengths you’ve gone to secure an album?
Peter: Not especially (laughs). While there are many particular records we’d jump at the chance to get ahold of, it’s always been more exciting for me to discover things haphazardly in collections, flea markets, shops, and thrift stores. Finding out about things we didn’t know existed, and coming up on things we didn’t expect purely by chance often makes for a more rewarding experience than going after a single holy grail record, though that has never really been our focus or preoccupation.
You guys have plenty of rare records coming through your shop, what is the most expensive record you guys have ever sold?
Dylan: It’s true that we have relatively tough-to-find records, but we’ve never really been dealers of incredibly rare records ourselves, and in the shop, we try to stock things at a price people can actually afford. Most of our records are in the $5-$40 range, for instance. This feels important in a period where the cost of practically everything continues to rise.
Probably the most expensive record I’ve ever sold was the superb “Paul’s Ark” 45 by the Morris Wilson Beau Bailey Quintet, which went for $600 or so, and was something I traded for rather than purchased outright. That’s typically the route we try to go with very rare records.
Are there any albums/artists you guys are still trying to get in your hands that still evade you?
Dylan: Whisper of Dharma by The Human Arts Ensemble and Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo by Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina.
Peter: I’d love to get my hands on some of the Nihon Kogakuin College (“NKS”) albums – city pop released by Japanese college kids in the ’80s.
Being that you guys specialize in a niche area of music, do you find yourself having to restock more often than other record shops that specialize in new releases? How does Offshore fit into the music scene of San Francisco?
Peter: We typically restock 1-2 times per week often responding to what styles of music have been selling recently and what we have that we’re most excited about putting out. We carry almost exclusively used titles rather than dedicating much of our small space to new stuff. While we’re both fans of many new artists and reissue projects, we enjoy the organic approach to selling what we find out in the world. Being amongst so many thrift stores on Haight Street, there’s a special satisfaction to giving a record a fresh set of ears or helping someone reconnect with old favorites from the past.
Between the two of you, how is the curation process of Offshore Sounds split up and what was the process like to find the perfect formula to match both of your tastes?
Peter: I’ve always been a deep diver when it comes to my music interests – most of my youth immersed in hip hop, my younger adult years involved in the indie music scene, and in recent years Japanese artists of the 70s and 80s. I’ve been lucky to have a career surrounded by music professionals and super fans, so even if I’m not familiar with an album, I know it’s important to somebody I admire.
Dylan: For much of the last few years my interests have been rooted in looking for music from Japan, East Africa, and different corners of Europe, alongside California-specific new-age LPs and other oddities. Living in different European cities for a time was very instructive because there are just records from all over the world around, and in Paris in particular you can consistently find rare stuff on the street, at flea markets, and so on. Being there solidified a more ecumenical approach to record seeking in me, one I continue to maintain for the purposes of selecting for the store. Lately, I have been gravitating toward more Gwo Ka and Zouk from the West Indies, which of course has many incredibly rich musical traditions, and we will soon have more of that stuff in stock. Peter and I are often digging for stuff together or processing new stock alongside one another, so we can make decisions together about which stuff will fit better in the store, on Discogs, or wherever else.
With Offshore Sounds being such a young shop, your heads must be spinning with options of where to take it next. What does 2023 hold for Offshore Sounds?
Peter: For our brick-and-mortar, we’re really just focused on getting the word out about our existence and finding the best records to stock that we can. Since we’re more of a hybrid store, we feel it gives us more freedom to experiment – so we’re currently exploring some new types of events we can organize for local record lovers. Coming up in April, we’re launching a new pop-up listening bar event called Small Hours with our friend Vibe In Place at local San Francisco wine and sake bar, Millay. We’re also hoping to introduce some events at our store later in the year.
Dylan: The listening event should be really fun. We want to play records in their entirety, ones that we love that aren’t that well known or don’t necessarily contain tracks suitable to play at DJ nights. We’re also hoping to travel more to buy records outside of the Bay Area later this year. We’re essentially open to whatever the future holds.
