Luke Cameron has been collecting vinyl records for over 25 years. “I got my mum's records when I was about 14 and just started from there.
I used to just sort of buy up as much as I could get my hands on,” says Luke. 

He recalls one of his favourite records from that box of vinyl he inherited from his mother. “Carol King’s Tapestries. It was a massive album. Still is. We play it every Sunday. I also love Paul Simon’s Graceland, it was my dad’s favourite.”

These days Luke is at the helm of Daylesford Records, a vinyl shop in the heart of town. On last count, Luke had amassed a collection of over 20,000 records. 

“We sell new and used records but we specialise in the rare first press records - the hard-to-get stuff. We're putting out 150 to 200 records every week so there's always new records and we’re buying records if people are looking to sell.”

For Luke, from that very moment he first listened to his mother’s records he fell under the spell of a records' sound. 

“When you're listening to a really well pressed LP, it's full spectrum sound. People talk about feeling the music when they listen to records but that’s actually people picking up on the full spectrum of recorded music. These days there’s so much compression that the music loses the soul of the music to me anyway.”

In his formative years, Luke was collecting and Djing really rare hip-hop records. “Stuff like Jazzmatazz by MC Guru, a seminal jazz and hip-hop fusion album which was really the first of its kind. All the Beastie Boys original pressings, early Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC, All the classics. People refer to them as hip-hop grails.”

After his foray into hip-hop, Luke stretched his passion into other genres. “I was listening to a lot of Radiohead, we’ve got a lot of their first pressings on the walls, they’re super rare. I never really delved into one genre. I think good music is just good music. But now I’m listening to a lot of jazz; Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.”

Luke travels to Japan every 3-6 months to hunt down his records before amassing 50-60 kilos on his voyage back to Daylesford. 

And this whole venture only started a year ago. Luke adds, “I never sold a record up until last year.”

“We moved up from Melbourne at the start of Covid. We own a design company where we would build augmented reality for clients. We worked with Nike, Cartier and major global clients. It was really stressful and we needed a break. I had all these records and thought now is the right time.”

Now at his store, Luke has rediscovered his sense of place. “We have really great regulars that come in every week. It’s been a great shift for me, doing something I really love.”

Daylesford Records is open Wednesday to Friday from 10am - 4pm.