Nestled between a betting shop, a taxidermist and a kebab joint, among other local businesses and some shuttered shop fronts, Kriminal Records feels like a porthole to another world. Rock, metal, reggae, soul, hardcore, jazz… little music goes unrepresented here. The decor is triumphantly odd. A couple of doors away, live venue The Cab is plastered with a sign reading: ‘Voice of The People’. It’s easy to picture Skindred here. Which they will be, shortly.
“It’s just things I like,” Kriminal’s owner Dean Beddis says of the assorted tribal masks, plush toys, paintings, 70s Action Man figures and, on one wall, an enormous pair of Iron Age Celtic horns. “Like the carnyx,” he muses, looking at the latter. “They found one of those recently that they dug up in England…”
