Hadn't been to BLAKK pretty much since it opened, so last week I decided to pop my head in. And, oh, look! It's a record store now. One half of the space in BLAKK — Beijing art/music/fashion maven Jiancui's labor of love showroom for new works from the hippest sections of the local underground — is now Echo Inc., a pretty damn rad vinyl shop. Echo is operated by Wang Kai, who previously ran the Strange Fruit in 33 store down by Meishuguan (see what that one was all about here). Gone is the dusty charm of Strange Fruit's stacks on stacks on stacks of secondhand vinyl hand-picked from countless Guangzhou blind buys. This is, after all, BLAKK, with its hyper-glossed, very chic B&W aesthetic. At Echo Inc., Wang Kai has curated a much more focused selection, primarily new records imported from US distributors. Prices range from 40rmb for secondhand singles and EPs to a few hundred kuai for imported, 180-gram slabs. You can tell from the classification system alone that Wang Kai knows his business. Within "Jazz" there are separate sections for key labels, even a standalone section for women artists. Electronic music LPs are likewise obsessively parsed, with separate sections for Ambient, IDM, Glitch, Experimental / Avant-garde, Minimal, Minimal Wave, Dub Techno, etc, etc, in addition to your straight-ahead, meat-and-potatoes House and Techno sections. You can also buy serious audiophile gear at Echo: high-end record players, analog tube receivers, audio interfaces, headphones, et al, with price matching quality. Of course, BLAKK still retains its collection of art knickknacks, design objects, funky sartorial accoutrements. The vibe hasn't changed much. There are still Ren Hang books all over the walls. There are still "punk" accessories that cost more than a used electric guitar. There are still furry platform shoes. But back to Echo. I rounded up some real hardcore music nerd types to flip through the stacks and determine if this newcomer passes muster. Here's what they dug up:

: Julius Steinhoff - Flocking Behavior. This is from a German label, Smallville, a deep house label. I really like deep house. I really like all the releases on that label. It's an independent label, but it's not that small... pretty much on the same level as Dial.

: Well, it's mostly electronic and jazz, which is not my biggest interest. But it's still pretty cool. There's some pretty good stuff here. I went straight for the Experimental / Avant-Garde section, and saw a lot of good stuff, but ended up selecting Big Science by Laurie Anderson, just because it's one that I really like and haven't listened to for a long time.

: Well, honestly I'm just going through it. Obviously, most of the vinyls here are secondhand, but I just figured out there are a couple of current releases, such as the brilliant new Efdemin album. I've seen the cover but I haven't actually seen the vinyl. It's released by my favorite label of all time, Dial Records from Germany. Beyond, what do I think... I'm actually more in the process of figuring out the concept of the selection. Recently, vinyl got some attention in China. But I'm not really sure what is the core motivation for having vinyl. It's definitely an interesting object, and it sounds different if you're an audiophile, but I always ask myself, "What is the specific motivation to get a vinyl?" At the end, it's about the music, but definitely the packaging has something interesting.

: I just picked this one because I like it... I don't really go to a lot of record stores here. I like Suicide because they're really punk. At that time there weren't many other bands just using synthesizers and drums. They're also really psychedelic.

: It's not really the same kind of psychedelic music. Their version is dirtier. Their sound, their tones are really chaotic. Liu Xinyu: I also really like this Velvet Underground record. I think their best record isn't the self-titled, it's White Light/White Heat. Every song is pretty revolutionary for its time. This album had a huge influence on a lot of music and culture that came after. I really love that song "Sister Ray," over 17 minutes long, basically just a big loop. Also that song "The Gift." I think this is their most experimental record.

: I was surprised at the breadth of the selection, and particularly surprised to find Booker Ervin, who's one of my favorite sax players. When I was working at the radio station in college I did a show called "Jazz 'Til Dawn", which was Sunday morning from 1am to 6am, and I would play a lot of '50s and '60s bop and hard bop, into some free jazz. I would play really long sets of Booker Ervin sometimes at like four in the morning, five in the morning, and I'd get calls from cab drivers in Queens. [Laughs.] There was this one dude, I don't know his name, I think he was Jamaican. He'd get so excited, he'd hit me up at 4:30 in the morning and be like, "Benny man, you're playing my Booker Ervin!" I was really shocked and impressed to see Booker Ervin's The Freedom and Space Sessions here.

: One is Yusef Lateef's live [album], the other is Abbey Lincoln. In the last few days I found out that she [Abbey Lincoln] was playing with Max Roach live, and I found out that Yoko Ono copied her singing style a lot, fashion style. [Yusef Lateef] is kind of like some Muslim jazz. Actually this guy comes from Detroit in the 1950s and '60s, some kind of [smooth] jazz stuff. But his religion is Islam, and after a while his music got more and more crazy and different.

: Maybe two years ago I started to get into jazz. Before that, a lot of friends introduced me to some jazz music, some classic albums and artists, like Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, some psychedelic jazz, between regular jazz and old-school rock music. And I said, "Oh, this is fucking cool!" I can hear that jazz drumming, for me, is very different from something like rock'n'roll drums. Jazz drumming is less about the rhythm or beat, it's more like another kind of instrument. You can think about the drum like a saxophone or a guitar or bass, not something that's just like a click machine. It's magical. *** Echo Inc. is open daily from roughly 2pm (or whenever Wang Kai gets in) until roughly 10pm (or whenever Jiancui leaves). Find more info + address in BLAKK's listing.