John
His Master’s Voice. After two false starts in tracking down a little record store action in Hong Kong – one closed, the other closed down – a what-the-heck visit to HMV in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon became the fall back option onto which this vinyl freak fell back.
I’m glad I did as HMV Hong Kong is quite different to the HMV stores of nineties Britain and the (now defunct) HMV outlets of noughties Australia.
For starters, new vinyl at HMV Hong Kong is bountiful – the range is good but pricing is quite a bit higher than elsewhere in the world. A copy of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1 will set you back 375HKD. At time of writing, that’s US$48 or £36 or AU$63. The more recently released Cheetah EP goes out for 189HKD – US$24/£18/AU$32.
Secondly, HMV Hong Kong also sells second hand vinyl. One’s excited will likely be blunted when upon finding the eight or so racks dedicated to rock/pop are full of the same old same old releases of the 70s and 80s (see video). Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel. Queen, Procol Harem – and that’s the good stuff.
Each piece of second hand vinyl is also quite costly: around 199-249HKD per album. Toto – we’re not in Tokyo anymore.
On the upside, HMV Hong Kong stocks are varied range of audio hardware including quite a few audiophile-friendly pieces. I noted a Sennheiser range stocked all the way up to the HD800, a selection of Master&Dynamic headphones, a TEAC DAC, DAPs from Sony/Pioneer/Onkyo, a Naim Mu-so Qb and Egg speakers from KEF.
Among HMV’s selection of uber-budget turntables, a jewel in the rough: the DSD-digitising Sony PS-HX500 that we first caught at CES 2016. Elsewhere, a selection of cartridges came from Audio Technica.
Google reports two other HMV store locations in Hong Kong so I can’t speak for them but the iSquare location will likely be of interest to mainstreamers and to those of a nerdier audiophile persuasion.
Further information: HMV Hong Kong
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