In the spin and swing of a vinyl revival

The first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008 and is celebrated by record stores around the globe. This year's event takes place on Saturday.

Yang, also a producer and chief executive of Maybe Mars, one of the largest independent record labels in China - and whose founding in Beijing coincided with that of Record Store Day - announced that to mark the day this year the company would hold a live show in the capital on April 21 featuring three indie rock bands: Lonely Leary, Muzzy Mum and Streets Kill Strange Animals.

Three days before the show the record label will release a compilation of vinyls featuring the three bands' latest singles, and P.K 14 will contribute two singles to the compilation.

When Yang gets to Free Sound his fans are waiting in a basement room whose walls are adorned with concert postures featuring well-known Chinese rockers such as Dou Wei and Ma Tiao.

The fans have done well to find Free Sound, for it is a shoebox of a shop tucked away in a small alley in downtown Beijing. And those who do find it will quickly be disabused of the quaint notion that old-style phonographic recordings have gone the way of the dinosaur.