Home Grown: An accidental collector with an Atocha DJ desk

Because every record collection has a story.

Home Grown is our new series profiling you lot and your excellent record collections. Taking our cue from the brilliant submissions to the #VFRecordCollections thread on Instagram, we want to share a little of your hard-earned love for vinyl with the world.

Each week, we’ll be profiling a different collector from around the world and finding out what makes them tick. Want in? Send us a pic of your collection and a few words about your collection to [email protected].

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Name: Jason Fellows

Location: Berlin, Germany

Size of collection: 2,500

How long have you been collecting?

I bought my first 12″ accidentally in 2000. I’d intended to buy a CD from the old Warp Records online shop, but I didn’t pay attention to the format. The old turntable in my family’s attic moved into my room. I was hooked on that feeling.

What part of your set-up are you most proud of?

Even though they are made of raw plywood and pretty rough-looking, I’m still proud of the storage boxes I made myself with clamps, a jigsaw, and a sander. They’re stackable and portable; good for the times when I had to move my collection between tiny New York apartments far too often. The space on top is where I keep the records that end up in my gig bags most frequently. People ask about the sunken turntable console with the sexy mod legs a lot. It was made by Atocha Design in NYC. We met at a design show and I eventually traded some work for it.

What does your record collection mean to you?

I couldn’t be without it. The collection was packed up in a crate along with my instruments and shipped across the ocean when I immigrated to Germany. Before I left, I sold about 700 releases at a record fair. There is absolutely nothing left that I am not in love with. What’s left is a picture of my personality, like those images composed of thousands of small photos. Playing them for friends at home or in clubs is more meaningful expression than I can manage in 90% of the conversations in my life. They keep me connected to the people that make the music I love. They make me a patron of the arts, not a passive consumer.

Photos: Instagram