Continuing our spotlight series called Favourite Finds, we ask some of our favourite DJs, collectors and selectors to tell us the story behind how they came across one of their favourite records.

For the next instalment, we’ve asked veteran digger, DJ and documentary maker Victor Kiswell to tell us the story behind he came across one of his favourite records.

Having collected records since his childhood, Victor has honed an ability to track down and find those prized records that few can uncover. It’s a talent that led to him making it his profession, buying and selling rare records to private collectors, revered DJs and esteemed producers. Diverse in his digs, his online / appointment-only store houses countless gems from the world of jazz, oriental groove, soundtracks, modern and old Caribbean, afro and Latin, library music and “bizarre” records. Not stopping there, Victor has gone on to produce several documentary series capturing the search for these elusive records, DJed around the world and co-founded the incredible musical time machine Radiooooo app.

"I need to contextualize, as this store happened a while ago. At the time I had ended my studies and started selling records from my flat. It was not an easy enterprise as the biggest difficulty was not to find records, but the ways to sell them, ‘cause I had no regular shop. I had my little network, including people I had met in a record store where I worked as a student. No Discogs back then, no social media, and I did not like to sell in fairs, so word of mouth was the way. Or I was doing the salesman, going from one studio to another with a big bag full of records, and was playing the music I had found to the people in the industry. We also had eBay. When you had the knowledge, you could find incredible records on that site at that time. And you could sell too, only on auctions, with sometimes surprising issues.

Digging was also an experience. If you knew your thing, you were a step ahead, hence you had a chance to get super good records for cheap. So I was digging a lot, and discovering a lot, which was encouraging the digging even more. One place I liked a lot for digging any kind of stuff was the Northern flea market in Paris. There was this stall I never missed, held by an old and funny Lebanese guy. I was a regular buyer from his store. A dirty mess, as he was not only selling records, but porn magazines, DVDs, and VHS.

After buying some records from him, he showed one of them to his assistant and said "we’ll have to get another copy of that in the cellars". "You have cellars where you store your records?". "Yes" he replied, "and you can come visit if you want, I’m working from there every Friday evening". I was there the next Friday, of course, assuming that I would be one of the first diggers to search the premises. There is nothing more pleasant and exciting than being the first to visit a stock. He took me into a classy building in the 11th arrondissement, and we went down, underground. What an astonishing place! This guy had rented all the cellars in the building, they were all linked to each other and were full of records, magazines, cassettes. He let me rummage around."

"One of the first records I stumbled upon was none other than 'Primavera' by Bruno Nicolai and Alessandro Alessandroni, an Italian library music album (but released in France), coming with a beautiful, recognisable, pale green coloured sleeve. I kept on digging around, but quite quickly I heard people coming down the stairs to join us: they were well-dressed old gentlemen, in Burberry raincoats, you know the deal, and of course they were looking for X-rated material, trying to stay out of sight, reluctant to do their research in the aisles of flea markets, in full view of everyone. I made a pile, paid (almost nothing) and left this strange cave.

I was already fond of library music, and I knew that Italian composers had something extra. But this was the first time I had found this one… was I going to keep it? Listening to this magnificent Italian-style bossa jazz record was driving me crazy, but I had to pay the rent, you know, so I put it on eBay, with a nice description, without knowing its value, but still having an idea of who might be interested. After a week, the result was astonishing: the album had reached a record sum for the time. And there was a detail that is important: all the email addresses of the bidders were visible on the site - it was the good old days, before things were too closely monitored. They were all Japanese collectors. And they constituted one of my first pools of buyers of rare records. This is how I started working mostly with Japanese people during the first three years of my new job. Japanese were ahead in terms of music knowledge, especially in the early 2000’s. I’ve discovered so much music through them, they were my motivation to explore more and more in order to provide them with good records and make a living out of it.

A few months later, I found five pristine copies of 'Primavera' in the Southern suburbs, somewhere around Chatillon."

Big thanks to Victor for taking the time out to tell us his story. Be sure to give him a follow on Instagram to keep up-to-date with his gigs, check out his record store and dive into the Radiooooo app.