I met Chris Della Ragione on a snowy afternoon. It was a slow day at Elm City Sounds in Westville, and a comforting tranquility trailed the idle tempo of the record store’s background jazz music. Forty-two-year-old Della Ragione, the owner and sole employee, was cleaning some vinyls behind the counter, nodding in brief acknowledgement at my entrance as he circled a rag around a disc. His hands moved with a soothing suaveness. His head of dark brown curls and a chin of light stubble dipped under a black baseball cap. A rhythmic intimacy blanketed the room. Bins and stacks overflowed with vintage records, but rather than overwhelming me, they invited curiosity and intentionality.
In the age of instantaneous online music releases, the pace of the music industry follows the ever-changing track of trends. Interest in vinyl records has skyrocketed as obsession with curating a musical identity has surfaced, leading to the mass production of Urban Outfitters “suitcase” record players, the oversaturation of Nirvana band tees at Target, and the availability of hit pressings at big box chain stores. As an avid record collector for over two decades, Della Ragione saw an opportunity in this development. In 2020, he decided to buy an empty space for his own record store, and he moved back to New Haven from New York City. “New York was already kind of saturated, and you could go open a shop and fight it out,” he explains. “But there’s an opportunity to go somewhere where the stores are already closed and open up a store and put the flag down.”
While this sudden vinyl boom opened doors for him, the digital accessibility of music and the romanticization of vintage records come at a cost. Della Ragione views this transition as a loss of authenticity. To him, listening to music is a craft. Like all things, it takes time and effort to get the full experience.
“People nowadays take things for granted to a degree,” he says with a hint of nostalgia. Growing up in Stamford, Della Ragione surrounded himself with hip-hop and jazz music and embedded himself in the New Haven and NYC music scenes. He spent his early adulthood digging through records for samples, managing a record label called Sound of Dissent, and deejaying for local venues. “The mid-nineties was a very special time. I was just buying rap records, and it was the best time in hip-hop ever. There was a magic back then, and collecting records was like a discovery waiting to happen. It was very real.”
By now, the background record in the store has finished playing. Della Ragione wanders over to switch it to the B-side, and I ask him to elaborate on his opinions about accessibility. He explains that it comes at the risk of musical uniformity.
“It’s amazing to be able to hear all different types of music. But I think it’s really hurt local music scenes and the way music styles are created over time. Back then, all music scenes were highly located in insulated little incubators, where for years, a sound could develop on its own and you wouldn’t hear stuff from other places. It wasn’t like today, where every night you’re just inundated with every different style and inevitably it influences you. And so everything just becomes very homogenous because of that.” Della Ragione believes that the loss of music’s regional identity has also taken sound quality with it, too.
“There’s no modern digital equipment—even if you spend as much money as you can—that’s better than a vinyl set,” he says with vehement confidence. “A real system is the best sounding thing in the world.” Not just any vinyl set, though. According to Della Ragione, the decline of sound quality has followed the rise of fast fashion and rapid trend cycles. Big vinyl pressing companies have shaved off quality for profits, catering to shareholders in order to create a brand identity. Now, it’s all about prioritizing quantity, and Elm City Sounds’ curated selection offers resistance to the culture of mass production.
I ask Della Ragione about the soundsystem he uses in his shop. He stops cleaning for a second to gesture at the record player a few feet away and talks about the various components of his soundsystem, which he is currently building. He even graces me with a tangent about an IBM engineer who specializes in the production of diamond needles. Precision is key. New technology doesn’t mix with old. The best quality of sound is at a mid-range frequency. Amplifier design is a science in itself. His sheer dedication to his craft is evident, and his knowledge never once comes across as pretentious or alienating—traits that music fanatics are often branded with.
“I can’t disclose it,” Della Ragione half-jokingly responds when I ask how he obtains records to sell in the store. I expect him to stop at that, but he surprises me by continuing, “you have to earn trust. You have to have a good reputation because record collections are a very personal thing for a lot of people to pass on, because a lot of times the collections belong to a deceased relative, and it’s very personal. It’s a therapeutic thing—you have to sit down and listen to them. Let people tell you stories and they’ll feel good about passing on these records to you.”
The collection at Elm City Sounds is directly influenced by Della Ragione’s own music preferences. The conscious choice to include certain records in the store infuses the space with a deliberateness that also seems to influence the shopping experience there. Most customers do not come in to look for a specific album, preferring to browse through the store’s offerings with an open mind, sifting through bin after bin. Della Ragione supports exploring the identities of various record stores, saying that “shops should have character. I encourage people to go to other shops, because each one is different.”
The snow has dwindled to a leisurely flurry. In his black Supreme sweatshirt, laid-back khaki slacks, and brown loafers, Della Ragione peeks out in the back of a room filled to the brim with culture, history, value, and identity. But still, the thousands of records all boil down to one person’s passion for music. “I’m still a collector above everything,” he declares. His greatest pride isn’t his shop, his aptitude for communication, or his vast music knowledge. For Della Ragione, his connection with music always makes its return to his personal pride and joy: his own record collection. “Honestly, it all comes back to that.”
