In May of 1994, I was walking around Soho when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted what appeared to be Pucci dress hanging in a dark alley. I went up the block to investigate and met Chris Brick, the owner of this boutique called Smylonylon. It was a small shop where Chris lived with is wife, Judy. The ground floor was filled with a fantastic selection of dead stock clothing. There was a small ledge above the clothes racks where Chris displayed some of his vinyl treasures like Bill Plummer and The Cosmic Brotherhood. It was the first time that I had met anyone who was listening to this obscure music that I had been collecting for years. Chris and I instantly bonded and became friends, I suggested that Smylonylon would be the perfect location to sell my mixed tapes. We started with easy listening and eventually moved on to disco (Smylon 1-20). The last 10 tapes (Smylon 21-30) was more cosmic and disco that I had been collecting since the 1970′s. The first batch of 10 tapes sold out within 3 days. Chris kept asking for more and more. Over the next 6 years we sold over 6000 tapes!

The original Smylonylon tapes were sold between may 1994 and december 1999 in New York City at the Smylonylon shop in Manhattan.

The store changed its name and location a few times in Soho, it was called:
Smylonylon
Arkel & Sparkle
Minusyourhines
Center For The Dull

here a list of tapes i mixed for the shops:
Smylonylon Volumes 1-30
Arkel & Sparkel Volume 1
Tynynyny Volumes 1& 2

The music scene in the early 90s in New York was Diva House and Hip Hop, that was not my thing. I wanted to open people’s ears to the music that i liked and make some money doing it. The Smylonylon tapes were the perfect medium to get my message across. When i started to collect these records in the early 80s, there was absolutely no market for this music. You could buy novelty records for 50 cents at Academy Records on 18th Street. Thrift Shops and flea markets were full of obscure records like the flex disc from EMS that I bought for 10 cents in Queens. I was always digging in crates and bins with cheap vinyl all over the 5 boroughs in New York and beyond. Daily trips to the hot spots was a must. Shopping for vinyl was my thing and I could not stop.

In the spring of 1994, I mixed the first volume of the Smylonylon tapes out of music i been collecting for the past 10 years in New York City. I used records from different music genres like Easy Listening, Disco, Lounge Music, strange sound efx records, and mixed them into a 90 minute DJ mix. Back then DJs wouldn’t list the artists and tracks on their tapes. With my tapes it was different. I wanted the listener to know what they were listening to and I wanted to get the message out that there is better stuff to listen to. Just go and find it! Some of them got the message, like Andrew Butler from Hercules And The Love Affair or David and Stephan Dewaele from 2manydjs. The tapes changed their listening habits and opened a whole new world for them. It inspired them to develop my idea into something new and bigger, something more commercial then a mixed tape found in some underground store in Manhattan.

Looking back, 1994 was perfect for launching what I had in mind. This was the pre-digital era. There were no Blogs on the internet or MP3s to download. People still had tape decks at home and in cars and there was no other way of getting this music but through my mix tapes and that’s what made them exclusive. I had been djing for over 10 years so i had the skills and the equipment to mix, duplicate and put together the tapes. I could manufacture and sell a product that could be made at home. To keep up with the demand of a 1000 tapes a year I had to get a tape duplicator (Telex Copyette EH 1-2-1 Hi Speed Stereo Cassette Copier). Using this I could dub a 90 minute tape in 3 minutes and turn out about 20 tapes an hour. Every friday, I would go down to the shops on ‪Lafayette Street‬ and deliver more tapes and get paid for what sold the previous week. A very nice way to make a buck! Some of it went into paying my rent some of it into buying more cheap vinyl.

For 6 years the tapes sold like crazy! Chris kept digging up more and more dead stock and stuffing it into the stores and decorating with more and more neon colored plexiglas and pink fur. The store vibrated with color and music. Chris would played my mixed tapes in the stores every day from opening till closing, 7 days a week for 6 years! That vibe was unique and amazing. The first people to pick up on it were the fashion industry. In 1996, i was hired to do music for runway shows. Then we started to do a party called Tynynyny in different locations like the Flamingo East on 2nd Ave and the old Milkbar on Carmine Street. Adi and Angi (who later went on to form AS-FOUR) worked the door. Nahila was the host and Chris and I djied with guest like Larry7 and others. It was great fun and great music!

In 1999 Chris and I did a nice layout and story about Smylonylon for Zingmagazine. Devon Dekou, the publisher, gave us carte blanche to do whatever we wanted across 20 pages. This marked the end of Smylonylon and the beginning of In Flagranti. The sound, the vintage covers, and the bizarre headlines, are the basic elements I used for In Flagranti. All i had to do was to exchange the deadstock with dead-samples from the Smylonylon tapes, rearrange them into tracks and print them onto Vinyl and CDs. I was ready for the new decade, but i was sidetracked by the events of 9/11, so it took me a couple of years to reorganize my life and to leave New York City after living there for 18 years. Eventually, I moved back to Europe and started using the internet to get started on my next project with Sasa Crnobrnja called In Flagranti.

There was a great article (by a unknown writer) on Wikipedia about Smylonylon and the tapes, but they deleted it for some bizarre reason.

here a copy of the deleted text:

Smylonylon (pronounced SMILE-on-NY-lon) was a vintage clothing boutique in downtown Manhattan. It opened in 1994 on Crosby St. shortly before relocating to 222 Lafayette Street (Manhattan)

The store was owned and operated by Chris Brick (of Family of God and Demob Clothing) and his wife Judy (singer Linda Lamb), who, in 1993, happened to come into a large supply of dead stock clothing from the 1970s. Most certainly their eclectic tastes in music influenced the atmosphere of the store, perhaps even more than the clothing, and Chris worked with his friend Alex Gloor to tirelessly produce mixtapes of their rare record collections, which ranged from South American exotica and French orchestral music to Italo-Disco, musique concrete, and minimal synth. Alex Gloor is currently in the band In Flagranti on Codek Records Europe and which has a somewhat Italo-Disco sound. There are 30 volumes of mixtapes with the Smylonylon title, and others bearing the titles Tynynyny (named after a legendary West Village party thrown by the store’s crew) and Arkle & Sparkle (the name of the later and larger incarnation of the original store). Some of these mixtapes can be found on the music blog Dalston Oxfam Shop. After Arkle & Sparkle, the store was called Center for the Dull, which was also briefly a record label used as the vehicle for Brick’s band Family of God. The store closed in late 2002 due to an increase in rent.

Smylonylon was the first vintage store in the United States to sell (what is now called dead stock) from the 60′s and 70′s. Smylonylon was also the first in many areas.The compilation tapes made by Chris Brick and Alex Gloor reintroduced to the world artist such as Lee Hazelwood and Bridget Bardot as well as hundreds of others musicians from the world of Italio-disco and electro. Smylonylon influenced designers such as Miuccia Prada, Tom Ford, Anna Sui, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier Betsey Johnson,Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren.They all personally shopped in the store and based many pieces in their collections on the items found in Smylonylon. Everyone from Lisa Marie Presley to Cloe Sevigny shopped in Smylonylon. All New York actors, models and musicians shopped In Smylonylon and her sister store Arkle and Sparkle (later named Center for the Dull). Tim Burton bought clothes for Austin Powers from Smylonylon. The theme song for the first Austin Powers film was taken from one of the Smlyonylon compilations.The list goes on and one and sadly is not very well documented on the internet. There were several films made in Smylonylon and Arkle and Sparkle maybe someone out there could find them! Not many people like to give credit were credit is due and would like to pretend they made creative discoveries on their own when actually Smylonylon and Center for the Dull were two stores in New York in the 90′s that influenced everyone and everything!!!

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Alex Gloor, August 2011, Basel/Switzerland
email: info@codek.com