Mabu Vinyl spins Cape Town right round baby

Mabu Vinyl offers Cape Town the largest variety of music - as it was meant to be heard

Vinyl captures the spirit of an age – the simplicity and charm of a long passed era. One shop in Cape Town captures this same spirit, authentically and originally: Mabu Vinyl.

If you're shopping for music in Cape Town, visiting Mabu Vinyl is a must. The music store is drenched in the nostalgia of musical escapism; located in Gardens, number 2 Rheede Street off Kloof, you could be forgiven for driving right past the shop without noticing it – which would be to your own detriment.

The interior is for me the best part – the walls are decorated with a variety of interesting posters of every musical and pop culture phenomenon imaginable. This in addition to the rows and countless rows of records on display gives off a colourful eyeful that entrances rather than confuses.

Don’t stress about broken needles, even if your gramophone has long given up the ghost you can simply purchase one of the turntables they have on offer. They also sell and trade new and second hand LP records, 12” singles, 7” singles, 78’s, CD's, DVD's, cassette tapes, videos, books, T-shirts, comics and magazines. The shop also carries a fantastic, varied range of independent CD releases by a range of South African artists.

They’re constantly gaining new additions to their collections as well...

The friendly staff are extremely knowledgeable, and always ready to answer any questions you may have. The extent of their musical knowledge, (not limited to South African music by ANY means) is vast, even inexhaustible.

Mabu Vinyl shows all the other’s how it should be done. About as far from a corporate music shop as is possible, Mabu illustrates the musical alternative to the mainstream – and after all that’s what so many Capetonians are constantly searching for.

The dictionary describes a vinyl record as “An analogue sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc.” 

Certainly comprehensive, but no mention of rocking out in your bedroom... or how instrumental the vinyl record’s use as a medium was during some of music’s most revolutionary moments. No mention of its momentary fall from grace thanks to the onset of tapes, video and then the compact disc, or the fact that despite these ‘higher’ technologies the record managed to survive through the evolution of sound (but that’s ok, I just told you all that ).

It’s this prestige that Mabu Vinyl maintains, in the eyes and ears of audiophiles everywhere.

Mabu Vinyl
2 Rheede Street | Gardens | City Centre | Cape Town | +27 (0)21 423 7635

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Visit an eatery, a vinyl store and an art gallery live in perfect harmony at One Park.

Check out this awesome new highly-curated record store in Obs called The Other Records.

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