This piece reflects on the slow, intentional rituals of analogue music listening through the memory of a family record player, tracing how technological shifts have reshaped our relationship with sound, time, and attention. It explores 'Manual', Black&Beige’s neo-archival project that foregrounds analogue culture as an act of resistance against digital fatigue and algorithmic overload. By centring figures like Murugan, a vinyl collector in Bengaluru, and Jayraj, a turntable repair engineer, the piece argues for a return to patience and presence.
There used to be an old record player in my grandmother’s house. It was a present from my grandfather for their anniversary. And, of course, with it came a shelf of vinyls, everything from Mohammad Rafi to John McLaughlin. Then, as my mum and uncle grew older, they also could contribute to the household musical repository and would scrounge and save money to buy the Pretty Woman soundtrack, which carried Roxette’s 'It Must Have Been Love'.
The record player was almost a family member, one around which everyone gathered whose ownership was always contested by my mother and her brother who’d often fight about what should play next. And then, of course, came cassettes and CDs, followed by the iPod, and then, well, music streaming services. And yes, as much as they made music accessible to everyone and stripped it of any pretence, as my grandmother says, they also took away the art of listening with patience and time.
Black&Beige, a creative studio based out of Bengaluru’s latest IP, 'Manual', is a neo-archival exploration of analogue culture, that tries to take us back to a time when putting in time and energy wasn’t seen as a waste but as a form of investment, and to redefine that idea for a generation that, peering over vertical feeds, often sees analogue as slow, when it has always been intentional.
The first chapter of Manual takes us to Shivajinagar in Bengaluru, into Murugan’s living room. Murugan is an old-school vinyl buff with a generational stash of record players and cassettes, and an artist himself. His living room is a museum of music listening. It pulls you away from screens and curated playlists, and asks you to give the process your patience.
Art was never meant to be consumed in overload, and the processes that lead to these works were never meant to be simply optimised.
The renewed pull towards analog culture feels less like nostalgia and more like resistance. As conversations around digital fatigue and algorithmic overstimulation grow louder, there is an increasing desire for experiences that demand presence rather than productivity. Analogue practices, whether it’s listening to a vinyl record, developing film, or sitting with a book uninterrupted, offer a rare permission to slow down without apology. And in a culture that has created a narrative around the fact that efficiency always means fast, and anything else is wasteful of people’s attention, these opportunities create temporal boundaries in our world that are tangible, reminding us that attention is not meant to be fragmented.
In conversation with Homegrown, Sonia Thiyam, founder of Black&Beige, said, “These people, back in the day, were the creators of neo-culture of their time. For us, while creating a new neo-culture with younger creatives, it was important to bring in the cultural shapers of the past.”
By foregrounding figures like Murugan, and Jayraj, an engineer who works alongside him repairing vinyl players and turntables, Manual offers them a global platform as living representatives of our cultural memory. Murugan’s story travelled to the Sikka Art & Design Festival in Dubai, where his living room was recreated in meticulous detail, transforming an intimate personal archive into an experience for a global audience.
Manual wants us to relearn how to listen, not just to music but to time itself. Listen and choose intentionally what we are consuming and understand the systems, people and mechanisms that lead to this consumption. Much like the record player in my grandmother’s house, these analogue spaces remind us that culture is not built in moments of efficiency, but in disagreements over what plays next, and the quiet patience in placing the stylus onto the vinyl and waiting for the small crackle that arrives before the song.
You can find out more about Manual here.
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