A painted nebula stretches right across the shopfront at Unit A5 of Jones Arcade, carrying the strapline “the sound of a universe expanding”. Behind it sits Fields of Magnetic Horizon, the shop that brought record retail back to Ystrad Mynach after decades in which the town had none of its own.
Background / History
Jonathan Richards opened the doors on Saturday 2 December 2023. Born in Ystrad Mynach in the 1960s, he spent much of his working life in the London music business as a label and publishing manager, with time at Sanctuary Records Group and Cherry Red Records and freelance product management for Universal Music and BMG. He also cleared music licensing for titles including Classic Rock and Metal Hammer. Having moved back to the town with his family, he spent several years dealing records and running fairs across South and West Wales before taking a permanent unit. The shop’s name comes straight out of that career: Fields of Magnetic Horizon was the title of a two-CD proto-metal compilation he was product managing in the mid-2000s, and he held on to it until the right use came along.
What You’ll Find
New and second-hand vinyl and CDs make up the bulk of the stock, joined by DVDs, box sets, T-shirts, posters and assorted music ephemera. The centre of gravity is rock and metal in most of their forms, with Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and KISS turning up regularly in the window, alongside cult soundtracks, punk and steady runs of reissues. Crates and racks are filed by genre and then alphabetically, which turns a browse into something you can actually work through rather than a lucky dip. The CD pricing is notably keen. Records and CDs are bought as well as sold, so the shelves refresh at a decent rate, and anything not on the floor can go through the record-finding service, requested in person or by message and sourced through decades of trade contacts. Mail order runs via eBay.
Experience / Atmosphere
Jones Arcade gives the shop a fine setting, a historic covered arcade that has been smartly refurbished, with tiled floors, tall glazing and deep blue-grey shopfront joinery. The window is treated as a display in its own right, dressed for the season and stacked with sleeves worth stopping for. Inside, gig posters and reissue artwork line the walls above the browsers, a deck sits out on the counter and boxes of fresh intake are usually somewhere near your feet. Conversation comes easily here, and customers tend to leave with something they had not gone in for. The shop also travels, taking a stall to record fairs around South Wales, which keeps stock turning over and ties the place into a wider collecting community.
Why Visit
- The first record shop in Ystrad Mynach for decades, and a real anchor for the town centre.
- Deep classic rock, metal and punk sections across both vinyl and CD, sensibly priced.
- Stock filed by genre and then alphabetically, so a serious dig is rewarded rather than exhausting.
- A record-finding service backed by genuine label and distribution contacts.
- Records and CDs bought as well as sold, useful if you are thinning a collection.
- A regular presence at record fairs across South Wales.
Summary
Fields of Magnetic Horizon is a small shop with a long memory. It offers the pleasures of a proper second-hand dig alongside the reach of someone who spent years on the label side of the business, and it does so in a town that had gone a generation without anywhere to buy records. Whether you are hunting a particular pressing, filling gaps from the CD crates or simply after an unhurried hour among sleeves you have not seen in years, the trip to Jones Arcade repays itself.
