Mike Mettler

If you’re gonna name a company whose raison d’être is to focus on celebrating all the joys of cassette culture, you can’t do much better than declaratively calling yourselves We Are Rewind. A French company based in Paris, We Are Rewind was founded in 2016 in collaboration with ORA, along with support from French engineers who boast over 40 years of experience in analog technology. Fast-forward to the here and now, wherein We Are Rewind have recently introduced two high-profile limited-editions portable cassette players that celebrate a pair of music icons from different eras. Read on to see how these two players are the perfect entry points for young, budding, and longtime tapeheads alike. . .

Welcome to the first installment of New Wax Wednesday for 2026! We already have plenty of great 2026 releases to cover in future columns, but we wanted to kick off the new year by instead diving into something we ran out of time to post about at the tail end of 2025 — namely, Rhino’s 4LP deluxe edition commemorating The Replacements’ final indie release on Twin/Tone, October 1984’s truly seminal Let It Be. Read AP editor Mike Mettler’s inside look at how the expertly expanded Let It Be collection should in no way leave any of its listeners “Unsatisfied”. . .

Happy 2026, everyone! We hope the holidays treated you well, and that you got all the cool new analog gear and LPs on your respective wishlists, and then some! Seeing how we’re all about how to best spin that precious vinyl of ours, what better way to start the new year than by looking at a great way to clean those new — and used! — LPs before that very first needle drop (not to mention all those repeated playbacks that will surely follow, for that matter). And thus, we give you HumminGuru’s EZ vinyl record washer, which is a logical, and quite affordable, entry point for anyone just getting into the art of LP cleaning. . .

Oh, where did the time go. . .? It’s been yet another year of acquiring, archiving, cleaning, spinning, and listening to LP after LP, and box set after box set — and sometimes, even some EPs and 45s got into that mix as well! Naturally, before the big mid-week holiday festivities take over our front-of-mindsets, we here at AP feel it’s the exact right time to determine the best of what we’ve heard on vinyl during the past 12 months — and we’ll be covering our favorites of the year in two installments. Between the two of us — i.e., 1) Mike Mettler, your intrepid AP editor, and 2) chief LP reviewer, Mark Smotroff — we have listened to multiple-hundreds’ worth of albums on vinyl in 2025 apiece, so check out Part 1 to see what our 10-plus favorite archival reissue LPs of the year are. . .