LODENICE — A small Czech village has become a center of the global boom in retro records as antiquated vinyl-pressing machines turn out the tunes of rock stars from Madonna to the Rolling Stones.



Despite the rise of CDs and digital music, a local company GZ Media decided to hold onto those old machines — which are now paying off, as they press millions of vinyl records sold each year around the world.



Record collectors and music hipsters have fueled a revival of vinyl in the West and Japan with claims that the format offers warmer sound and greater aesthetics.



“We pressed around 14 million records last year, the most in the world,” said Michal Nemec, sales and marketing director for GZ Media, based in the village of Lodenice outside Prague.



“Despite the CD boom in the 1980s and 90s, someone with foresight decided to save the old vinyl record presses and store them in a warehouse,” he said. “A good decision.”



That is how a dizzying number of the world’s vinyl records — featuring Michael Jackson, Queen, U2 and other top artists — has ended up coming out of this village of 1,800 people tucked away in a valley in the Czech Republic.



GZ Media pressed its first record there in 1951. Most of the equipment dates back to the 1960s and 70s. “Vinyl is making a comeback,” the local branch of the worldwide recording industry organization IFPI said in its 2014 annual report.



It represents around seven percent of total physical album sales in the Czech Republic, and six percent in the United States, the biggest vinyl market, the report said.



“No major band or singer puts out a new album today without releasing some copies on vinyl,” the IFPI said. With a dense network of pipes below the ceiling, the noisy production hall at GZ Media resembles the insides of a submarine — and feels about as hot as in a tropical climate.



At regular intervals, workers feed the hydraulic presses with a vinyl biscuit — “kolacek” or small round cake in Czech — that is made of a polycarbonate mixture.



Weighed down by 150-200 tons, the kolacek only needs a few seconds to become a record. “We’ve recorded annual growth of 25-30 percent in our vinyl production over the past four years, and we don’t expect the situation to change dramatically — at least not in the next two years,” Nemec said.



He said the company’s largest contract to date has been a deluxe collection of reissues of around 30 Rolling Stones albums sent to the rock legends’ fan clubs.



“But vinyl fans aren’t just into records because of nostalgia. There are quite a lot of young people who want to be counter-cultural,” Nemec said. “CDs haven’t wiped out vinyl, just like e-book readers didn’t wipe out paper books.” - AFP