I have been collecting records for over a decade now. I bought my first vinyl record in Discos Revolver around 2015. I perfectly remember what record it was, and what made me buy it in that moment. In fact, I can remember where i have bought almost 99% of my records, and that is a great milestone for me, because im not known specially for having a fine grained and detailed memory. Buying physical records has been a special thing for me since then.

Of course we had some legacy records at home from my mom and dad collection, and I already played them on my turntable (and also tried to sample them without any success) but I had this permanent need, urge and visions of having my own collection filled with my own personal choices, and build something great from those records that would last forever and they would not disappear as bytes do sometimes on hard drives. But with time, accumulating so many records (and hey, a 600 record collection is not that big, there are freaks out there with massive collections, im just getting stressed with a small number here!) has made me realize that there are many of them that I just bought them in order to discover new samples or hidden gems, and ended being not that great records, not even aligned with my personal taste or even to be played at parties (believe me, there are some weird ugly ones that I am ashamed of having and I have just played barely once and will never do again).

It does not make sense to possess so much stuff that I do not enjoy, and that I won’t listen to never again. When I moved from my mom’s apparment, I had to pack all my records and move them to my new place: I realized how much space they were taking, and how many of them I had not listened to in years. I applied a first filter and left a lot of them in my mom’s place, but I still brought a lot of them with me that in that moment I thought I would listen to again or play with them again, but I haven’t.

I reminded myself that I was not a record collector, I was a music lover, and I wanted to have a collection that reflected my personal taste and the music I truly enjoyed. Eduardo de La Calle said it best in this interview (44:35) that from time to time I love to re watch and interiorize all his wise words throughout all the interview:

No tengo ésta coleccion. Yo se lo que está ahí y lo que me interesa (…) vivo como muy al día, no estoy muy apegado a tener cosas. He tirado discos a la basura por lotes de 300, todo tipo de colecciones, modas que han ido pasando que me marcaron pero que he visto que no servía de nada guardar (…) no soy el típico dj que vive en una casa de p *** madre con una colección de 8.000 vinilos, ni 10.000 ni 30.000. Tampoco hay muchos discos que se puedan guardar para siempre, que sean atemporales.

Eduardo is a true artist, and has been a huge influence even in my life, not only in music (thanks Pau for introducing me to his music and person). I recommend you watching the whole interview, in fact, all of his interviews and of course, all of his work.

So, here I am: ready to keep only the records that still matter for me. Everything else can find a new home. Music was never meant to be weighed down by shelves or counted like trophies; it’s meant to make your body move, to make you think and deeply connect with your true self.