HUSBAND and wife Greg and Karrie, both 30, are about to open a vinyl record shop, RPM Records, in Devizes Road, Old Town. The couple, who have a daughter and live in Liden, spoke to BARRIE HUDSON.

THE death of vinyl was announced long before before Greg Miszkowski and Karrie Miszkowska were born, with the CD named as its assassin.

More than three decades later vinyl sales are growing, with millions of discs sold every year.

Karrie and Greg – she is originally from Walcot and he grew up in Lawn - insist there’s no mystery to the trend – it’s simply that vinyl is better.

Karrie said: “I grew up with my Dad enforcing Status Quo on me for most of my early years!

“I went to gigs with him and remember being put into matching denim dresses with my sister. That was all on CD.

“I was introduced to vinyl through Greg. The passion for it is very infectious. It’s so easy for me to be in the kitchen, cooking, and listening to Spotify, but even my daughter now says, ‘Mum, can we put a vinyl on - it’s so much better.’

“For me, someone who’s still quite new when you consider that people have been listening to vinyl for years and years, it fills the house with a kind of warmth that you don’t get from a digital sound – especially with the older vinyls.

“I love listening to acts like Frank Sinatra because their voices were only really recorded on vinyl. You can’t replicate that on an MP3 format. It sounds like it’s been too edited or remastered, whereas when you listen to the original sound it’s almost as if they’re in the living room and they’re with you. It fills the space.

“Spotify sits in the background but you make an effort to listen to vinyl.”

Greg’s father was a gifted accordionist who performed played countless concerts, especially for members of the Polish community. Greg owns a vinyl album on which he played.

He said: “My little brother played drums for bands and I grew up playing guitar, keyboards and piano and went on to study music at university. I just generally always had that appreciation for music.

“It wasn’t until maybe eight or nine years ago that I was re-introduced to vinyl, once my adult ears had started listening to music properly. There’s just something about it. You can’t quite get the same experience listening to CDs or MP3s that you can with a record.

“It’s a lot more of an experience when you’re listening to records. You really have to look after them – I know a lot of people don’t and it kind of saddens me when I see vinyl that people haven’t really looked after.

““When it comes to MP3s and digital formats, a lot of the time they’re remastered to that they’re supposedly more audible, but if you put a vinyl on…I can listen to pretty much anything and notice something I haven’t heard before on other formats. Being able to do that pretty much every single time means it’s almost like a new experience every time you listen to it.

“I don’t get that with the likes of Spotify, CDs and stuff. I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD.

“A couple of months back I was getting fed up with work and Karrie was really encouraging. She said: ‘Why don’t we start our own business and see what happens?’”

Visitors to the shop are promised a relaxing atmosphere with sofas, coffee tables and turntables so they can listen to records they’re thinking of buying.

There will also be regular live music. Opening day - Saturday, July 23 – will feature performances from punk duo Two Sick Monkeys, Northern Soul on vinyl from dj Mike Flay, acoustic guitar performer Jack Moore and dj Para.

Greg will run the shop full time while Karrie, who works in HR, will be there at weekends.

Karrie said: “Greg wasn’t happy at work, so I said: ‘Then let’s change it. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again you’re never going to be happy and that’s no life to lead.

“It’s just happened so organically.

“We don’t have dreams of grandeur. We just want to provide a service, and what’s really important as well is that we provide a space for local artists to be heard. We really want to support some of the amazing acts in Swindon and the South West.”

Greg added: “I’d been at my previous job for nearly six years, and if anything it taught me that anything is possible because I worked in the live events industry.

“It means you work to a specific deadline. It doesn’t matter what happens, the show must go on. I think that’s the biggest thing I got out of working for the last company. I’d just got to the point where I really couldn’t carry on doing what I was doing because it started making me quite unhappy.

“I thought to myself, ‘Nobody can change that apart from me, and if I’m going to make it happen I’m going to make it happen now.’ If it works it works; if it doesn’t then at last I’ve tried.

“Anyone is capable of doing it – it’s just a case of taking a risk and putting your mind to it, and just believing in yourselves.

“At the end of the day it would be great if we were really, really successful, but that’s not the be-all and end-all. We’re doing it because we love it and we just want to share our passion with other people so they can feel the same way that we do.”

Karrie said: “Music is something that everyone appreciates in some form or another, and to deliver it on a format which intensifies that feeling is great.

“Everyone has a song they can attach to a period in their life. I’ve got a certain album that was a break-up album, and when I listen to that album it takes me right back there to that point in my life. But every time I listen to Status Quo I’m transformed to thinking about my dad and then I feel warm and I feel loved.

“It just makes sense to make this an even bigger part of our lives than it already is.”

The shop’s Facebook presence is RPMRecordsLtd.