DJ Shadow x The Vinyl Factory
We’ve been talking about a vinyl project with DJ Shadow for over a year now, and this super-limited release of his new single is just a taster of what’s to come…
100 copies, promo-only, 180-gram super heavyweight double A-side on Midnight Satin blue coloured vinyl, these beauties are rare as hens teeth and highly collectible. If you’re lucky enough to be sent or offered one, snap it up!
Why tinker with perfection?
The Guardian came to visit The Vinyl Factory a few weeks back to see how a vinyl record is made, and earlier this week they published their feature in which they flattered The Vinyl Factory by describing us as an “ultra cool niche” brand who produces “perfect” discs.
They also made this rather lovely short film, featuring some beautiful photographs of our pressing plant and the processes involved in making the shiny black discs we all know and love. Click on the pic above to see more…
Grace Jones performs at The Vinyl Factory!
She came, she conquered, she wore an amazing red mask and then performed poetry! Well, what else did we expect from the legend that is Grace Jones, snapped above last night at the packed opening party at The Vinyl Factory gallery for our latest show, Grace Jones by Chris Levine ‘Stillness at the Speed of Light’.
Showcasing Chris Levine’s incredible 3D holographic portraits of the diva and pop legend like you’ve never seen her before, the exhibition is free and runs at The Vinyl Factory gallery, 51 Poland Street, London, till May 14th.
Click here for an exhibition preview and click here to buy a beautiful limited vinyl edition and fine art prints of Grace by Chris.
More pictures to follow next week!
The Vinyl Factory x Michael Nyman = CINE OPERA
In celebration of his specially commissioned new short film at Tate Modern, The Vinyl Factory is delighted to present CINE OPERA, a stunning new vinyl & art edition by Michael Nyman, one of the 20th century’s greatest living composers.
CINE OPERA is a 21st anniversary re-imagining of the classic Michael Nyman album, La Traversée de Paris, showcasing this remarkable renaissance man’s work as composer, filmmaker, photographer and artist.
Limited to just 500 copies, CINE OPERA is presented in a beautiful gatefold sleeve; the iconic album pressed on vinyl for the first time, with the addition of three exclusive bonus tracks and a beautiful fine art print of Michael Nyman’s photography, hand numbered and signed by the artist, plus hand-written notes. Michael Nyman has been closely involved with every aspect of this exclusive new creation.
CINE OPERA represents Nyman at a creative peak, bringing together the old and the new, a powerful statement on the timeless nature of his work, his continuing relevance, and his enduring success in multiple artistic fields.
Set for release on April 12th, CINE OPERA will be available to pre-order exclusively from The Vinyl Factory next week…
Massive Attack ‘Heligoland’ deluxe vinyl edition - shipping next week!
Apologies to everyone for the delay in shipping this very special Massive Attack release. We have been working closely with the band to meet our collectively high-standards over the past few weeks but are pleased to say that the sleeves have now been finished and that we will commence shipping this edition on Thursday 18th March. Thanks again for your patience and valued custom. It will be worth the wait, we promise.
Here’s a new picture of Robert’s stunning artwork in the vinyl edition’s accompanying booklet (above) - for more images, click here.
Massive Attack ‘Heligoland’ - Triple Gatefold Deluxe Edition, available to pre-order from The Vinyl Factory now!
Working closely with Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and designer Tom Hingston, this special edition of the band’s acclaimed new album has been crafted to the very highest standards by The Vinyl Factory, and is available to pre-order now.
Housed in a unique black-glitter coated triple gatefold sleeve, this deluxe edition includes Heligoland’s 10 tracks on heavyweight double vinyl and CD, plus an additional 12″ containing four new Massive Attack tracks and a 28-page booklet with exclusive artwork and photography, housed in a striking, black-glitter covered sleeve.
Heligoland features guest vocals from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey and Tunde Adebimpe. Long time cohort Horace Andy makes a return alongside Massive Attack founding members Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall.
Full product details:
* Two 180-gram heavyweight vinyl records, containing Heligoland’s 10 tracks, crafted on the legendary EMI 1400 in Hayes, Middlesex.
* Exclusive bonus 180-gram heavyweight 12″ vinyl, containing four additional new Massive Attack tracks and remixes.
* Exclusive 28-page booklet, featuring new Robert Del Naja artwork and Massive Attack tour photography.
* CD, containing the full album, housed in a black pochette, with a black-glitter coated cover.
* Triple gatefold sleeve featuring unique black-glitter coated cover artwork by Robert Del Naja.
This deluxe edition is available to pre-order now from The Vinyl Factory.
The Vinyl Factory’s PSB box set sells at auction for a record-breaking £3,100!
Having been nominated as one of the Design Museum’s prestigious ‘Designs of the Year’ and voted the no1 “most collectible product of the 21st century” by Record Collector, this morning The Vinyl Factory crafted Pet Shop Boys limited edition vinyl box set scaled new heights, selling for a record-breaking price of £3,100 at auction, over ten times its original price.
The money raised by Oxfam’s online music auction goes to a much-needed cause, aiding the relief effort in Haiti. To read/see more of the other items still available for sale, click here.
The 21st century’s ‘most collectible’ product
Record Collector has voted The Vinyl Factory’s box set for Pet Shop Boys’ Yes number 1 in their list of the Top 50 ‘most collectible’ products of the 21st century! A modest accolade, granted, but we’ll take it.
You can see/read more about The Vinyl Factory in the new issue of Record Collector, out next week…
The Vinyl Factory’s Pet Shop Boys box set nominated for Design’s Museum’s ‘Designs of the Year’ Award
Farrow Design have been shortlisted for the Design Museum’s Brit Insurance Design Awards, for their work on the Pet Shop Boys‘ Yes – including a deluxe vinyl edition created with The Vinyl Factory.
The vinyl edition, which was limited to 300 copies worldwide and has long since sold out, is comprised of 11 super-heavyweight 12″ records pressed on the classic EMI 1400, and each featuring a Yes album track and exclusive instrumental. Each record is housed in a colour sleeve; when correctly arranged they allow you to make an 8-ft tick, matching the gold-plated metal tick on the smoked transparent perspex box which contains all of the above. You can find more information on this edition here.
Other artists and creative teams shortlisted for the Brit Insurance Design Awards include Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers for Bloom, Beth Ditto and Evans for their collaborative fashion line, and M/M (Paris) for their work on Bjork’s Voltaic: Songs From The Volta Tour.
The xx - special ltd vinyl edition available to buy now!
The xx audio-visual show opened last night at The Vinyl Factory (see above), and you can read more about the concept behind video director Saam Farahmand’s ‘Sculpture of an Album’ in this week’s Time Out, and online via Dazed Digital and Creative Review.
The limited edition of The xx’s debut album is now also in stock to buy from Phonica. Limited to just 500 copies worldwide, the gatefold edition includes a super-heavyweight 200-gram vinyl version of the band’s acclaimed album plus exclusive Matthew Dear remix of their track ‘VCR’ on a bonus 12″ which also features a beautiful etching on the reverse. In addition, the highly collectible package includes three art prints, signed by the respective band members, and hand-numbered, taken from the films featured in the exhibition.
The Vinyl Factory to create limited edition of The xx’s acclaimed album, and host audio-visual show
The xx have teamed up with The Vinyl Factory to showcase a unique audio-visual collaboration with video director Saam Farahmand, and create a deluxe limited edition version of their critically acclaimed debut album, voted the ‘best of 2009′ by The Guardian and FACT magazine, among others.
xx: A Sculpture of the Album finds Saam creating “a 3D physical interpretation” of the band’s debut album, xx, which will be displayed at The Vinyl Factory in London for six days from January 8-12, 2010 (opening times below).
The sculpture utilises film, light and sound via three specially created audio-visual units (each unit representing one member of the band with a mix of exclusively filmed footage and mixed sound), and every visitor will enjoy a totally unique experience of xx. According to the press release, it’s nothing less than a totally new way to immerse yourself in a record.
To celebrate this landmark event, fans will have the opportunity to purchase a deluxe vinyl version of The xx’s album, exclusively crafted by The Vinyl Factory . Available exclusively from Phonica (the record shop located above The Vinyl Factory gallery space), fans can buy a limited edition, gatefold version of xx that will include the album on heavyweight 12” vinyl and a second 12” that will feature the brand new Matthew Dear remix of The xx’s VCR on one side, and an etching on the other. The package also includes three prints of stills taken from Saam’s footage, one of each band member, signed by each band member.
xx: A Sculpture of the Album
The Vinyl Factory
51 Poland Street
London W1F
Opening Times:
Friday 8th January: 11.30am-8pm
Saturday 9th January: 11.30am-7.30pm
Sunday 10th January: 12midday-6pm
Monday 11th January: 11.30am-7.30pm
Tuesday 12th January: 11.30am-7.30pm
Entrance: Free
Massive Attack ‘record sleeve of the year’
The Vinyl Factory’s limited edition release of Massive Attack’s ‘Splitting The Atom’ EP has been nominated as one of the contenders for Art Vinyl’s ‘record sleeve of the year’ competition, justly recognised with a lovely big pic in the recent issue of Mixmag (see above). Get voting here!
The Vinyl Factory in Monocle magazine
Monocle magazine, Tyler Brule’s award-winning digest of global affairs, culture and design, has published a three-page feature about The Vinyl Factory in their latest issue, in shops now.
“Having produced highly collectible runs with artists such as Massive Attack, Pet Shop Boys and Damon Albarn, The Vinyl Factory has pioneered a new working relationship within the music industry,” Monocle says. “Companies like TVF produce experiences worth paying for.”
Thanks guys, to hear such support from a magazine we rate highly is a compliment indeed…
Record Collector celebrate Vinyl Factory releases as best of last 30 years!
We’re pleased as punch to reveal that the latest issue of Record Collector - a bumper 30th anniversary special - hails The Vinyl Factory releases of Monkey: Journey To The West and the Pet Shop Boys ‘Yes’ deluxe box sets as the most collectible vinyl releases of 2008 and 2009 respectively.
Of our lavish £250 limited edition Monkey box set, Record Collector says, “the first 500 copies with a Buddah box with music composed by (Damon) Albarn are the ones to have!”
And continues…”in an age of downloads, it is the niche, limited editions that hit the mark” - we couldn’t have put it better ourselves!
Massive Attack ‘Splitting The Atom’ Ltd Edition EP
Limited to just 1,000 copies worldwide, this beautifully presented and individually numbered vinyl and art edition has been crafted by The Vinyl Factory, working in close collaboration with Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja and designer Tom Hingston.
This is the only physical release of Massive’s stunning new four-track EP, ‘Splitting The Atom’, featuring guest vocalists Horace Andy, Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio), Guy Garvey (Elbow) and Martina Topley-Bird, as well as Damon Albarn, and the producers behind Fever Ray.
This limited edition includes a 180-gram heavyweight vinyl record, pressed on the legendary EMI 1400, with laser-etched labels on either side, housed in a bronze-foiled sleeve with artwork by Robert del Naja, produced on pristine Colourplan with solid black inner lining.
Available to pre-order now!
Estimated shipping date October 12th
Massive Attack EP features TV On The Radio, Guy Garvey, Fever Ray producers
Massive Attack will release their first new material in three years on October 5, a four-track EP entitled Splitting The Atom.
The EP was ecorded by Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall in Bristol. The lead track ‘Splitting The Atom’ sports vocals from longtime Jamaian cohort Horace Andy (’Hymn Of The Big Wheel’, ‘Angel’, etc), while ‘Pray For Rain’ is vocalled by Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio. Also included on the EP is a remix of new track ‘Psyche’ by Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid (fresh from editing recent material by The Big Pink and Bat For Lashes), and another new track, ‘Bulletproof Love’, sung by Elbow’s Guy Garvey and reworked by Christoff Berg, who produced the Fever Ray album with Van Rivers and Subliminal Kid.
How Britain got its groove back - Mail on Sunday hearts The Vinyl Factory
Battered by CDs, MP3s and internet streaming, you would have expected vinyl to be long since dead. So why is the west London factory famous for producing Sgt Pepper, The Dark Side Of The Moon and Tubular Bells back at the top of the charts again?
On top of a brown Formica cabinet in a Portakabin office in an anonymous warehouse on the outskirts of London sits the most privileged record player in pop-music history.
The Garrard direct-drive turntable was the first outside a recording studio ever to play the Beatles’ Revolver and Sgt Pepper; the first to experience Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon; it was the first to be challenged by the Sex Pistols‘ God Save The Queen; it was there at the birth of dance music; and it’s still going strong in the age of Arctic Monkeys, Animal Collective and Lily Allen.
Remember all that talk in the Eighties when shiny, allegedly indestructible CDs came out, about how the days of the LP were numbered? Well, just recently exactly the opposite has started to happen: it’s the CD, the experts are now saying, that will soon be obsolete. It’s vinyl that’s here to stay.
Changing methods: The vats of nickel sulphamate solution used to create the ‘master’ and ‘mother’
I’m surprised a vinyl industry still exists, but the fact that it does is tremendous,’ says Roy Matthews, 73, who has been working on and off at this vinyl factory since 1956 and is now its general manager. When he started it belonged to EMI.
Then in 2000 the EMI manufacturing complex was being sold and the plant was scheduled to close. It was bought by a pair of entrepreneurs, Mark Wadhwa and former Olympic sailor Tim Robinson, and now operates as The Vinyl Factory, manufacturing about 2.5 million records every year.
It’s the last of its kind, as the only major vinyl manufacturing plant left in the UK. The equipment and methods are unchanged, from the revered Garrard turntable on which the ‘positives’ (from which records are made) are checked for defects, to the sacks of black (or coloured) PVC pellets on the factory floor.
The pressing machine that today squashes out special collectors’ LP editions of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Monkey and the recent Pet Shop Boys album Yes is exactly the same one that pressed the original editions of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and Queen’s A Night At The Opera now gathering dust on your shelves.
Die Verboten - Has Arrived at 69 Dots!
One of the guys at the website 69 Dots has received his copy .. Have you?
This is a special edition LP in Recorded by a new collaboration with David and Stephan from Soulwax and who also form 2 many dj’s with Riton and artist Fergadelic, that can only be described as ‘space music’;
Die Verboten is a project that uses the studio as a compositional machine & a sound laboratory; a project that integrates sound & image.
This hand-numbered and stamped first edition includes an exclusive, 12″ vinyl-only release of ‘Live In Eivissa’, an 18-minute epic recorded in Ibiza, on the A-side, and a unique laser-etched artwork on the B-side.
My copy of it has just arrived, and it looks very nice indeed, you can buy a copy for your self from here
More photos after the jump.
DAZEDdigital.com - DIE VERBOTEN Soulwax, Riton and Fergadelic’s improvised Krautrock experiment…
The Soulwax boys keep getting great press like this interview from DAZEDdigital.com
Two years ago, in a villa on the magical White Isle of Ibiza Die Verboten was born, an experimental Krautrock journey with brothers Dewaele - Stephen and David from Soulwax, artist and drummer Fergadelic aka Fergus Purcell and producer Riton aka Henry Smithson. Released on The Vinyl Factory, “Live In Eivissa” is an 18-minute-long space music epic , and audio visual adventure of music, art and film. The music is being kept under wraps, but there is a 30 second teaser here.
Kanye Vs Pet Shop Boys
Thanks to the guys at Limited Hype there is a discussion on the airways ‘Kanye Vs Pet Shop Boys.’
” I know. Not really my thing either. But the packaging of their vinyl album “Yes, Pet Shop Boys” featuring the art of Farrow is just too fresh. It sets the bar high and above Kaws’ work for Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak in my opinion. Nobody really buys CD’s anymore, let alone vinyl, so you really have to appreciate the thought that went into this. Described to be their most ‘pop album’, they decided to go bright and colorful. The limited edition vinyl version of the album was produced by the The Vinyl Factory and features eleven tracks split over eleven separate records each in a coloured sleeve and housed in a smoked, handmade Perspex case! There are only 300 copies of the box set worldwide and one will cost you about $600. Visit thevinylfactory.com for full details and to order a copy.”
