Six writers. Hundreds of records. One rule: if a curator wouldn't press play at 2am with the lights down, it doesn't make the shortlist. Meet the people turning the crates for The Album Club.
From a basement in Bristol to a converted barn in upstate New York, our staff are scattered across the map. They each own a monthly slot, a corner of the genre map, and the right to veto anything that feels lazy.
Editor-in-Chief
Brooklyn, NY
Maren founded The Album Club after a decade writing liner notes for a label you'll find in the dead wax of half her collection. She guards the quarterly shortlist with a famously quick veto pen.
Vinyl Quality Lead
Lisbon, PT
Diego presses every recommendation through his own Pro-Ject and a loupe. If the surface noise bothers him, the rest of us hear about it — usually with waveform screenshots attached.
Deep Listen Editor
Kyoto, JP
Haruki runs the member-curated deep listen submissions queue. He answers every note personally, even the ones that arrive at 4am his time, which they always do.
Reissue & Archivist
Gothenburg, SE
Saskia owns the archive. She tracks original pressings, label disputes, and which Test Pressings actually surface at auction. If a story has a footnote, she wrote it.
Live & Concert Corespondent
São Paulo, BR
Rafael files the live dispatches — small rooms, big rooms, and the in-between ones that smell like spilled beer and old carpet. His listening notes are almost always the most quoted.
Member Submissions Lead
Berlin, DE
Iris runs the member inbox. She triages every deep listen submission, matches them to curators, and keeps the public queue honest. About a third of our published deep listens start on her desk.
Before the first record ever shipped, we wrote down the editorial promises we'd keep. They're short, slightly old-fashioned, and we re-read them on the first Monday of every month.
No "I skipped to track three" in our notes. Every curator commits to a minimum of three uninterrupted front-to-back listens before a record can be considered for the monthly pick.
A great record ruined by a noisy cut is still a ruined listen. Pressing quality, sleeve notes, and mastering get equal real estate in our reviews — not a footnote at the bottom.
At least one slot in every shortlist is reserved for a member submission that survived Iris's inbox. The club isn't a podium — it's a round table that happens to have a good sound system.
That's Tomas Aalto, a member from Helsinki, describing what happened when he sent Iris a note about a 1974 Finnish jazz-funk obscurity he'd pulled out of his uncle's attic. Two months later it was the August deep listen.
"I'm not a journalist. I'm an accountant. The fact that someone at The Album Club actually read what I sent and asked follow-up questions — that's why I keep paying for the membership."
Tomas's pick is one of fourteen member-curated deep listens we've published this year. Every member gets two free submission credits in their first month, and Iris reads each one personally — no AI triage, no canned replies.
The Album Club is small on purpose. We hire slowly, pay fairly, and expect a lot from the people who join the editorial table. If any of these sound like you, we want to hear from you — even if you don't check every box.
Own the monthly ambient, IDM, and leftfield electronic beat. You'll write a 1,200-word review, grade the pressing, and field member submissions in your corner of the genre map.
Work alongside Diego to grade new releases and reissues. You'll need a calibrated turntable, a steady hand with a USB microscope, and opinions about stampers you're willing to defend in writing.
Run the monthly member deep listen thread, surface interesting disagreements, and write the Friday recap. The role is half editor, half host — think book club energy with better footnotes.
Join the club to submit your own deep listen picks, or send us a writing sample and tell us which corner of the genre map you'd want to own. Either door leads to the same round table.