Whether you're building your first collection or expanding your lifetime's accumulation, First Press Record Fair is back at The Prince Albert on Sunday 1 December for another unmissable day of vinyl digging and Slack City Radio DJ sets.

This edition involves a stellar lineup of record sellers and DJs across both floors. Making their First Press @ The Albert debut are DJ Billy Nasty, Mr Bongo, Rob Life, Keyring Records, Union Lewes, Inverted Audio and Greg Phillips, while familiar favourites David Loja, Vinyl Selecter, and The Record Album return to complete the bill. Crates will be stocked with vinyl treasures spanning funk, soul, psych, jazz, hip-hop, world, dance, dub, electronic, and every groove in between.

Slack City Radio will accompany the eclectic crate offerings with a live, all-vinyl broadcast featuring sets from John Warr of AfroBase, Anna Barnfield of The Record Caddy, Chloe and Evey of Motor Skills, and O. Leather of Paradise Noir. Expect everything from far-out psych and rare groove classics, to experimental post-punk and gothic dark-wave. 

In conversation with First Press founder George Bassett, we happily learned that the record fairs started as a way for George to have his perfect day out: digging through great crates, listening to great tunes, drinking at a great establishment, and being surrounded by great, like-minded people. Fortunately for George, his idea of a perfect day out is also the perfect day out for many others in our music-hungry city. The fairs have continued to grow over the years, with highlights including cassette DJ sets, live performances, and the thrill of discovering rare finds you might never hear again.

The recent vinyl revival has breathed new life into both the secondhand and new release markets, supporting the livelihoods of record-selling collectors and emerging artists being squeezed by streaming platforms. But it’s also benefitted us, the music lovers! Owning and spinning records is a meaningful experience, transforming sounds into something tangible and deeply personal. First Press helps to create this space and cultivate those experiences.

See you there.

First Press Record Fair held its first event back in 2022, can you give us the background of how it all began?

I came back to Brighton from living in Australia (post-Covid) and wanted to try and get something going with my record collection. First Press was born after a series of conversations with The Prince Albert, where I'd worked and have a great relationship with. The venue thought that it would be a good idea to try out, getting some people together who I'd been buying off for years, some new people too, and try to make a bit of a network along with Slack City Radio. It just felt like an exciting project for me to try and get a bunch of interesting people together in a room and have a look through some crates. Ultimately, that's what I’m there for, to have a dig around myself! It’s been nice to meet lots of people along the way.

Awesome. So, it stems from your own interest as a record collector yourself?

Basically, I always want to buy more records, and First Press was a great excuse to get all those sellers into one room so that I could have a look through - I'm coming from a consumer point of view! I wanted to have people who are passionate about what they're selling, and DJs who are enjoying playing music as well. It was a really selfish project where I just wanted to have a great day out! So, I thought if I organised it, then hopefully other people would enjoy it too.

What’s your favourite part of running the events?

That's a very good question. There's a lot of plates spinning in the lead up to it; trying to get the marketing right, trying to get the right people together, trying to make sure that the music is going to be good on the day. So, I think when it gets to the first beer of the day, I've got an hour or two left, I can really start to relax and enjoy what I'm listening to and I've had a chance to talk to everybody who's there. I can see that the sellers are happy. I can see that there's lots of people coming in and having a look for themselves. If the punters are happy, then I'm happy. That moment we're all kind of like "oh, okay, it's happened." That's always a nice moment.

Do you have a particular stand-out memorable moment from any of your previous fairs?

At the first one we had someone called Henry Holmes come along and do a cassette DJ set, which I'd never seen before. It was amazing to watch him do that. He played some incredible sounds that I will almost certainly never hear again. I think that's one of the magical things about getting vinyl DJs, particularly, they always play things that are hard to find. So when you hear music at one of these sets, it might be the only time you're ever going to hear that song.

The vinyl buying and selling culture in Brighton is something I'm unfamiliar with but very interested in, can you talk us through it? 

We share this, I also don't know a huge amount about this world. There is just way too much music in the world for someone to claim to know everything! But the community is really passionate about their product. Everyone who's bought records to sell has spent a lifetime learning and made the decision to buy, knowing they can present it in a way that somebody else will be interested in. So you can pick out this random wonderful Sudanese record from the 70s, and they can tell you all about who produced it and who played on it - it's their passion. 

There's a really excellent, established record fair at Komedia, and a lot of the guys who've been going there have been record selling for 30-40 years. As a result, they've got huge collections from the 60s/70s that they’re really knowledgeable about. But there's other scenes within Brighton too. Like Rare Kind Records on Trafalgar Street, I would say that's one of the homes of more modern kind of digging - a lot more hip hop and great dance music upstairs. A lot more DJs are coming in trying to find world music. Mr Bongo, who we’ve got coming along to the next event, are well known for digging all over the world. 

Why do you think vinyl is so special to so many people? 

I think the recent revival has meant that vinyl has become the chosen format. I think if people want to buy something, it’s nice to have a really high quality version of it. For me, it's about the ritual. If you buy a record that you've invested 30 quid in, it's going to mean a lot to you and you'll take the time to actually listen to it, which you don't do so much with streaming. It's amazing that there’s so much music out there to listen to, but when you invest in a record, I think that it ends up just being more valuable to you than an album that you've heard online. 

I think people want to support artists as well, and that's definitely something that I'm conscious of with secondhand. An awful lot of what I'm doing with First Press is people buying secondhand stuff, and that doesn't really give anything back to artists. I've worked with a charity called Help Musicians to give them a presence via a QR code so people can donate to them, because I think it's important to support grassroots music as well. 

The best way I've heard it put is that you can't roll a joint on an MP3. That's ultimately what record collecting is about.

I'd not thought about the new vinyl vs secondhand vinyl distinction before, but I imagine that the industries prop each other up by boosting general interest in vinyl.

They're definitely symbiotic. There's a huge barrier to entry with collecting records because they're incredibly expensive. I would love to spend all of my money on records every week, but I do need to eat. So buying second hand is a great way to get into what it's all about. To anyone looking to get into it, I would really recommend going to carboot sales and charity shops. If you can find some cheap stuff that you've never heard of, you'll learn quickly about what labels you like from back in the day. Everyone has to start somewhere. 

A lot of people buy new records just to look at them. And that's great too. It's a really nice way of supporting your favourite local band or someone you've spent a lot of money to go and see at a big gig. For those artists, it's such an important source of income because they get so little from streaming. Obviously, other merch is available but you can't listen to T-shirts.

For anyone interested in starting to organise events or fairs, what would your key pieces of advice be?

First of all, just remember who you're doing it for, and why you're doing it. It's not news to say that social media is important in promoting, but I think that if you can give people actual tangible and interesting information, then people will engage with it. I think more is more when it comes to this kind of stuff. I think just be as active as you can. If it matters to you, and it's something that you're really passionate about, I think that's infectious and will energise the people you're working with. If you can get that message to people and show that you're passionate about it and it's not just any other event for you, people will get that it's something that's really important.

I think that’s really solid advice. If it's important to you, it’ll be important to someone else.

Also not being afraid to ask smart people stupid questions, and being okay with being honest. You'll probably make some mistakes, and if you want to do it again and you learn from it, that's great! If you can talk to people who you respect in the industry, and ask them how they got started, and what it is that they would do now if they were starting.

That really underscores the importance of community in all of this. First Press is your project, but you couldn’t do it without your collaborators.

I definitely couldn't do it without everyone who's involved. My partner has been instrumental, so many beers around the table trying out ideas. The guys at Slack City give me their years of experience. The sellers and DJs and venue too. It's a really nice thing to do. Brighton is so passionate about music. It's such a wonderful place to live, as you well know, it's just overflowing with people who are desperate to be listening to new stuff, or to be trying new things. It's a hungry town, it's a good place to be.

Keep up to date with First Press Record Fair (Instagram/Facebook), and go digging at The Prince Albert on Sunday 1 December.