A guide to VF's 2025 releases
A year in physical releases.
Almost every VF release this year came with a sense of where it happened. Some captured the exchange between artists and audiences in larger venues. Others came out of more contained settings, the Listening Room, the Reverb stage, where intimacy and live experimentation shifted what was played and recorded. A few offered a way to take something physical home from an exhibition.
Across the board, VF's 2025 output kept circling back to location and presence, which feels right for a label built around music you can both hear and hold.
The Blaze and the Reverb Live releases worked from live acoustics, bringing the room into the recording. Wes Anderson's collection pulled from music made for a cinema. Fred Again… and Gesaffelstein put out records designed for scale and shared listening. Robert Hood and Ryoji Ikeda's exhibition pieces pushed into territory where sound behaves spatially, moving through rooms and against people and walls. Goldie's 30th anniversary repress of Timeless saw him pressing his own records at The Vinyl Factory in Hayes, the place where it all begins.
As the year winds down, we're looking back at the records that shaped VF in 2025 — spanning veterans and newcomers, live captures and studio work, different genres and approaches.
The Blaze
Recorded Live At The Royal Albert Hall
One of the year's standout releases documented The Blaze's sold-out Royal Albert Hall show from 24 April 2024. Pressed as a limited live record, it caught the duo's sound stripped back: synths moving low and slow, vocals buried in reverb, rhythms contracting and expanding with the room.
Packaged in Colorplan sleeves with a hand-tipped photograph, the edition dropped exclusively through The Vinyl Factory on 25 July 2025.
Ryoji Ikeda
data-cosm n01
VF's most recent release came out of 180 Studios' commission of Ryoji Ikeda's site-specific audio-visual installation. The work moved through the full range of natural data — from particle physics up to astrophysical scale — with Ikeda's usual precision and immersion.
Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, the vinyl carried the 17-minute soundtrack, pressed on 180-gram black vinyl. It came in a die-cut outer sleeve and full-colour inner, with artwork pulled straight from the installation.
Isaiah Collier & Tim Regis
In The Listening Room
Captured inside Devon Turnbull's Hi-Fi Listening Room Dream No.1 at 180 Studios, the collaboration between saxophonist and composer Isaiah Collier and drummer Tim Regis became one of the year's most intimate VF releases. The vinyl-only live recording was limited to 500 copies, produced with The Vinyl Factory, and went to pre-order ahead of its 24 September release.
Recorded on 30 January 2025, the 26-minute, three-track performance was pressed on heavyweight 180-gram black vinyl in a colour sleeve with exclusive session photography. Engineered by Jamie Harley and produced by Sonny Daze, it was captured direct-to-tape with live space-echo folded into the mix.
Collier called the session "an interesting dichotomy between familiarity and unknowns… a conversation between two kindred spirits in the multiverse of sound." Regis added: "Nothing was planned, yet everything was intentional… I hope it healed and brought clarity to those who listened."
Arthur Jafa + Robert Hood
APEX
Twelve years after it was made in 2013, and while showing at 180 Studios' Paradigm Shift exhibition, APEX landed as a Vinyl Factory release in 2025. Arthur Jafa's rapid-fire montage — 841 still and moving images including Mickey Mouse, Tupac Shakur, Sojourner Truth, violence, sci-fi, spiritual iconography — flashed past in stroboscopic bursts. The work moved less through narrative than through Robert Hood's blunt, driving techno score.
Jafa has long described APEX as "Black Visual Intonation," an attempt to carry the force of Black musical expression into image. He's called it "a model for both a film… and a kind of pre- or anti-cinema." Its first appearance on vinyl shifted the work into a format for home listening. The edition was pressed on 180-gram black vinyl in a sleeve designed by Jafa.
Reverb Live Sessions
Halima, Judah & Martine Rose, Peter Adjaye
Throughout 2025, the Reverb Live Sessions series continued to document performances from The Vinyl Factory: Reverb exhibition at 180 Studios. Curated with Alaska Alaska, Kazeem Kuteyi and Benji B, the series highlighted artists including Jamilah Barry, Caleb Femi, Ragz Originale, Matthew Progress and Yohan Kebede. All performed on Amplified, the site-specific stage designed by Theaster Gates.
Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight vinyl and limited to 500 copies worldwide, the release featured a bespoke die-cut outer sleeve printed in one-colour flouro and artwork by Alaska Alaska.
Gesaffelstein
Aleph — Repress
This year, VF repressed Gesaffelstein's debut Aleph in response to ongoing demand, reimagining it as a double white heavyweight vinyl edition. Limited to 2000 copies and housed in bespoke gloss UV inner sleeves, the release brought back one of the defining electronic albums of its era.
Described as "atmospheric, driving techno-noir from France" (The Times) and "as important as anything of its generation" (DJ Mag), Aleph is a snapshot of Gesaffelstein's industrial, razor-edged sound. The edition included colossal tracks like "Pursuit" and the menacing "Hate or Glory," offering a way back into an album that still crushes on dancefloors.
Wes Anderson Soundtracks
The Life Aquatic, Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr Fox, The French Dispatch
VF’s 2025 collaboration with Wes Anderson resulted in four exclusive limited-edition soundtrack releases. The series formed a compact and carefully designed celebration of the music behind Fantastic Mr. Fox, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Life Aquatic and The French Dispatch.
Each edition featured two cuts from the original scores, with contributions from Jarvis Cocker, Seu Jorge, Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat. Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight black vinyl, the records came housed in 350gsm matt-laminated outer sleeves and 350gsm silk-matt inner cards, all protected in PVC sleeves. Each title was limited to 1000 copies worldwide.
Goldie
Timeless (30th Anniversary Reissue)
2025 marked three decades of Timeless, and Goldie’s anniversary reissue, produced with The Vinyl Factory in collaboration with London Records, stood as one of the year’s most sought-after VF releases. Released on 7 August, the edition comprised two 180-gram splatter-effect records, with each colour blend personally chosen by Goldie.
Limited to 500 copies, each hand-pressed, hand-numbered and hand-stamped, the reissue reaffirmed Timeless as one of UK dance music’s most influential works. The album continues to shape drum and bass thirty years on.
AHMD
Hello I Love You
Among 2025’s more provocative releases was Hello I Love You, a three-track EP from Anal House Meltdown (AHMD), issued by The Vinyl Factory and HYMN. Recorded over eight years by Tim Goalen, Kurtis Lincoln, George Longly, Eddie Peake, Jack Peñate and Prem Sahib, the project drew from encounters with strangers in online sex video chat rooms and pushed intimacy and dissonance through their off-kilter sonic lens.
This release marked AHMD’s second outing on HYMN.
Fred again..
Peace U Need
VF’s second collaboration with Fred again.. and In Real Life became one of the year's most talked-about releases. Peace U Need was recorded live at a surprise show at the Sydney Opera House on 27 February 2024. The performance sparked the highest on-sale demand in the venue’s history, with 125,000 people joining the queue for a room holding just 2,250.
Pressed on 180-gram magnolia vinyl, the 12" featured two live versions of “Peace U Need” and included contributions from Henry Counsell of Joy Anonymous, described by Fred as “Fred’s best friend in the world.”
Limited to 1000 hand-numbered copies, the release was housed in Colorplan outer and inner sleeves with a hand-tipped photograph. Fifty copies were made available exclusively through The Vinyl Factory shop.
Check out the full The Vinyl Factory back catalogue here.
