MUSIC

code name: A-Z by Ryoji Ikeda comprises 26 sonic frequencies which form an audio conversation derived from the US military use of Morse code. Pressed on clear 12" vinyl with 13 locked grooves on each side and the title of each hand etched into the grooves.

Initially released on the occasion of Elevation 2017, an arts festival in Gstaad produced by LUMA Foundation, where Ryoji presented a site-specific installation of Test Pattern.

Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist, Ryoji Ikeda collaborates with The Vinyl Factory on a 12” vinyl-only release housing 10 locked grooves each consisting of a unique sine wave with a different frequency correlating to a different planet in the solar system.

Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight vinyl, housed in a bespoke screen printed sleeve, this unique edition has been produced in celebration of UK premiere of Ryoji Ikeda’s supersymmetry installation, showing at The Vinyl Factory Space at Brewer Street Car Park from 23 April - 31 May 2015.

Ikeda's supersymmetry is a fully immersive auditory and visual experience - an artistic vision of the reality of nature, an interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory from an aesthetic viewpoint. The work draws on his exchanges with scientists and engineers during his stay at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.

The Vinyl Factory presents a brand new Ryoji Ikeda release. music for strings comprises three works written between 2020 and 2023, commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, and DTzM, and built entirely around the physical behaviour of bowed strings.

“In 2016, I had a series of audiovisual concerts at a festival in Kyoto. Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt was there, performing a large piece by Heiner Goebbels. We became friends, and years later, in 2021, they commissioned me to create a new piece for their 2023 season,” Ikeda explains. “Through a workshop with their players, I decided to focus exclusively on strings”.

REFLECTION [for string nonet], op.13 has all nine players locked into a seven-eight rhythm, but staggered so the parts seem to answer each other.

PRISM [for string nonet], op.14 takes the idea of white light splitting into a spectrum and applies it to sound, with Ikeda working through almost the entire pitch range of the ensemble, pulling out clusters of notes the way a prism pulls out colour.

MIRROR [one for two], op.12 is built on a sheet of music where the staff notation is mirrored, allowing it to be read simultaneously from both the normal and opposite directions. As a result, two players share the single notation, performing together while reading it in opposite directions.

“For many years, I had ideas for MIRROR [one for two] that exists only as a dream. It seems simple, but it is extremely difficult to make sense of due to its very restricted rule. At the start, I decided to tackle this piece,” says Ikeda.

“Another dream of mine was to form a string ensemble arranged linearly on stage. Usually players perform in a semicircular formation to see each other. A linear formation, however, denies this visual connection. The challenge was implemented with PRISM [for string nonet] and REFLECTION [for string nonet].”

Performed by Ensemble Modern and recorded by SWR, the work premiered in Amsterdam on 8 February 2024 before its UK premiere at the Barbican on 20 February 2026.

Australian duo Troth take their downbeat pop experiments further on their sixth album, The Limits of a Light Touch. Now based in Hobart, Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman draw on dub, DIY pop, post-rock and Fourth World electronics, with nods to Leslie Winer, Brenda Ray and Vashti Bunyan. Murky basslines, skeletal drum machines, spectral vocals and warped melodies give tracks like 'In Essence' and 'Found Ring' their peculiar charm. Elsewhere, 'She Sees Stars' explores hazy shoegaze, The Dengie Hundred guests on 'Two Urns Mark The Way', and 'Knotwork' closes with a playful burst of breakbeat dub.

First-time reissue of a coveted 1982 album from sound artist, percussionist and composer Kjell Samkopf, offering a heady exploration of natural sound and rhythm made from environmental recordings, vibraphone, marimba and dreamy synths - essential listening FFO Midori Takada, Craig Leon, Visible Cloaks. A towering figure in Norway's contemporary music scene, Kjell Samkopf studied jazz vibraphone at Berklee in 1979 before attending a World Music seminar at Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, in 1981, broadening his horizons sufficiently that when he arrived back in Norway, he was ready to work on his first solo album. Recorded in 1981 at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, 'Music for Solo Percussion and Electronics' showcases the influences that were circling around the young composer at the time, with its centrepiece, 'Invention No. 5', commissioned by Swedish Radio. Samkopf would go on to become Norway's first professor of percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music, as well as writing a litany of acclaimed works over the course of his career. ‘Music for Solo Percussion and Electronics’ is a hard record to accurately define, which might explain why it's remained the preserve of connoisseurs for so long. Undoubtedly influenced by jazz and free improvisation, it’s not a jazz record exactly, nor does it easily slot into the avant-classical canon. To approach its multi-faceted charms, it's best to start at the deep end, via the side-long epic, 'Oppfinnelse Nr 5 - Invention No 5'. Over a span of almost 25 minutes, Samkopf’s controlled, idiosyncratic expressions highlight his inventiveness, focusing on percussion but, above all, incredible attention to microscopic detail in the mix. Cricket chirps and distant birds create a tangible, natural backdrop as Samkopf follows their lead, layering bells and chimes as a response to the environment itself. It's the final act that has us fully ruined, though. Here, Samkopf cracks the biodome, losing the background soundscape for a moment to introduce analogue bass with a crash of cymbals. Threading through bells and woody clacks, he slowly re-builds his sonic ecosystem, following the metered, industrial-strength synth as if making a wry comment about technology itself. 'Music for Solo Percussion and Electronics' is one of those endlessly rewarding finds that fills a rare slot in the timeline; somewhere between Midori Takada's legendary 'Through the Looking Glass' (which emerged around the same period on the other side of the world) and Visible Cloaks' Fourth World-adjacent 'Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo', which arrived decades later and triggered so much of the contemporary obsession with percussive music from the margins.

" Overleaf is the new album by Paris-based musician Théo Martin, following Anti Atlas, released on LAAPS two years ago. Overleaf was recorded over the course of a few intense months in 2026. Every recording made during this period eventually found its place within the album, transformed, fragmented and reassembled, sometimes far removed from its original form. The process gradually became a kind of puzzle, built from accumulated sounds, accidents and imperfections. Tape remains at the heart of the album, but this time it is intertwined with a more extensive use of digital tools, opening new paths for transformation and layering. Overleaf is about carrying what remains into what is yet to come."

Track A1 recorded 20/2/73 Track B1 recorded 29/1/74 Tracklist: A1 Up To The Bakerloo Line With Anne (18:46) B1 Tony Wanna Go (14:27) Personnel : Bass: Holger Czukay Vocals: Damo Suzuki Drums: Jaki Liebezeit Guitar: Michael Karoli Keyboards: Irmin Schmidt

Urban and Tribal Portraits reaffirms the idea of postmodern pastiche as a multimedia multisensory experience and sound as an ecosystem that is both aleatory and concrete, ephemeral and durable. In these binary paradoxes, a radical notion of the nature of collaboration, that is both chance induced and conversely conceptually worked out, is also established. The result is a work that exposes the fixed assumptions about the constructed boundaries and flows between musical traditions and practices. On its own this is the ultimately problematic place where many of the so-called musics concerned with the world reach an impasse, incapable as they are of questioning their own basic assumptions and ultimately end up strengthening those very same boundaries and flows that they had apparently set out to challenge. Musci and Venosta go further, principally and more fundamentally, by picking away at the margins of pure sonorous events and musical material, noise and sonance. In doing so, Urban and Tribal Portraits repoliticizes the notion of pastiche, engaging as it does in a kind of ecopractice, turning the process rather than the musical object into the poetic focus of the work. Fixed categories are rendered ephemeral, temporal and spatial categories including the margins, so hard to overcome, between composition, improvisation, authorship, recordedness and live performance are deconstructed. In the end, where one would expect seriousness there is levity and where one might see some postmodern appropriative ironic juxtaposition there is intensity and respect of the magical organicness of the material sources.

The Loa of Music is the first recording project of Milanese composer and musician Roberto Musci inspired by Voodoo Religion; Vever (the magical voodoo paintings) and Loas, the dark and magic spirits. The deep charm of non-Western music has led him to travel for many years across Africa, India and Asia, studying rhythms, scales, performance and interpretation of the most varied traditional and indigenous music, as well he make many field recordings and collected ethnic instruments that would then be combined with synthesizers and electronics in The Loa of Music. Recorded in 1983 originally had 80 minutes of music but only half was released on original LP. SOAVE pressed for the first time the Complete Recording Session from original tapes of this masterpiece that combines in a natural, spontaneous and unforced manner the sounds of distant and historic cultures, loopped, cut and effected, with avantgarde and mystical approach creating a very personal and inspired innovative musical language.

An Ideal for Living is Joy Division’s debut EP, self-released in 1978 when the band was still developing its identity. The record reflects their early sound and marks a pivotal step before they gained wider recognition.

Roberto Musci returns with *Dusty Colors*, an extraordinary new album by one of the leading figures of Italian minimalism. Staying true to his unique approach to electroacoustic composition—which was already revolutionary in the legendary *The Loa of Music* (1984)—Musci weaves together field recordings, samples, and instrumental elements, drawing primarily on sounds and recordings collected during his travels in India over the past two years. The result is an immersive and deeply sensitive work—an exciting new chapter in a career that defies convention.

Recognized as one of Cal Tjader’s most distinctive explorations of the exotic-jazz aesthetic of the early 1960s, this album combines his fluid vibraphone playing and Latin-jazz foundations with Japanese and East Asian-inspired melodies, arrangements and sonorities. Featuring a polished ensemble of piano, organ, flute, percussion, bass and drums, the album is a highly atmospheric and accessible record made up of sophisticated arrangements and a unusual concept. First ever vinyl reissue since album's release in 1964.

Fully licensed, all tracks remastered ! Bim Sherman’s seminal second album from 1978 returns in true showcase style, complete with both vocal and dub versions. Recorded at Randy's and Channel One, the record features the legendary mixing touch of King Tubby's Studio, with Jammy at the controls. Rhythms are delivered by top-tier musicians from the Roots Radics and Soul Syndicate. Back in print with its original Jamaican album artwork!

An adventurous instrumental jazz-rock fusion album that captures the free-form chemistry between keyboardist Howard Wales and guitarist Jerry Garcia. The record blends jazz improvisation, psychedelic rock, blues, funk, and progressive influences into fluid, exploratory compositions driven by Wales' inventive keyboard work and Garcia's expressive, melodic guitar playing. Supported by musicians including John Kahn, Bill Vitt, and Martin Fierro, the album emphasizes spontaneous interplay over conventional song structures, making it one of Garcia's most experimental and influential side projects and a landmark recording in early jazz fusion. This release on vinyl is the first since late 80s.

Bonnie Dobson’s self-titled 1969 album is a striking blend of folk-pop and psychedelic nuances, marking a move beyond the traditional acoustic style that made her famous in the early 1960s. The album’s mood is often reflective and melancholic, balancing pastoral beauty with darker themes of change, loss, and uncertainty. One of the hidden gems of the album is track B4 “Pendant Que” by the celebrated Quebec songwriter Gilles Vigneault, which stands out since it is sung in French and reflects Dobson’s long-standing interest in French-Canadian repertoire. Today, Bonnie Dobson is often regarded as a cult favorite among fans of Canadian and psychedelic folk and one of the strongest albums in Dobson’s catalog. This new release on vinyl is the first since early 70s.

Adventures in Paradise is Minnie Riperton’s third studio album, released in 1975, and a sophisticated blend of soul, jazz, funk, and quiet-storm R&B. Following the huge success of Lovin’ You from her previous album Perfect Angel, Riperton moved toward a more mature, atmospheric sound. The album is known for its lush arrangements, intimate songwriting, and Riperton’s extraordinary five-octave voice. Although it did not match the commercial impact of Perfect Angel, Adventures in Paradise is widely regarded as one of Riperton’s artistic peaks, which captures her at her most expressive, adventurous, and emotionally nuanced. This vinyl edition is the first after ten years and the first ever in Europe since its release in 1975.

Originally released in Canada in the early eighties featuring Scientist's deep & heavy mixes of Bunny Lee produced riddims featuring some of Jamaica's best musicians of the time Bobby Ellis, Sly Dunbar, Ansel Collins and many more.

'Persistent Repetition Of Phrases' success comes from the attention it pays to the function of 'the loop', not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it's as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby's labyrinth of faulty remembrances, pointing their way towards the peculiarities dictating the manner by which the mind stores and attempts to recover information.

Madelyn Byrd draws on teenage years spent in the Sonoran Desert for Night Rider, a dreamlike meeting of poetry, electronics, ambient music and experimental pop. Cicadas, engines, clattering percussion and processed vocals evoke the desert after dark, while Patrick Shiroishi’s sax cuts through the electronic haze. There are echoes of Robert Ashley and Harold Budd in Byrd’s mix of spoken narrative, choral passages and abstract sound design, but Night Rider follows its own road, moving from the insect-like crunch of ‘Imprint’ to the woozy pop pull of ‘What Is, What Was’.

Ulla’s 28912 label returns with a gorgeous bouquet of lowercase wonders that'll cast a gentle spell over anyone on the line from Vincent Gallo to The Humble Bee, Sofie Birch to Tenniscoats.​ The fourth release on the label following Naemi's 'Breathless, Shorn' and Ulla's own 'Hometown Girl', and its ‘Other Girl’ companion piece, 'Puff' is a new album from Justin Cantrell aka J and the Woolen Stars, a core member of Naarm's underground scene as part of local supergroup Picnic, and the brains behind the excellent Daisart and se Dessaisir Publishing labels - we recommend you check in on both if you haven't already done so. ‘Puff’ is a glistening pool of lush refractions and music-box lullabies, featuring an array of acoustic instruments and fragile foley sounds that are gently peeled away until all we’re left with are the faded outlines of half-remembered songs. A sound that roots itself in the prophetic machinations of artists like Fennesz and the languid Japanese minimalism of Fourcolour or Moskitoo, 'Puff' strikes a delicate balance, sounding as bewitchingly informal as a Tenniscoats set, but also consistently muddling the perception of high and low-brow sound. Cantrell's skill lies in a sort of sonic conjuration, bamboozling the brains of those of us who grew up listening to stepped-on audio via ramshackle RealMedia streams by alchemising the content, turning found sound into gold. Just tell us you don't get chills from hearing the bitrate-impaired acoustic guitar on 'Dirty like an angel', set against a backdrop of windy, harmonic detritus. It's both meticulously contrived and gloriously off-the-cuff, like one of Vincent Gallo's classic 'When'-era demos reduced down to 96kbps. Similarly, 'She knows just what to say' provokes faint memories of folk music, with impromptu fiddle parts gently steamrolled to create a sound that’s nothing short of exquisite, like pressed flowers rediscovered in an old, discarded book. Even the more palpably electronic elements are hand sculpted in a way that belies the era we're living in - it's music for a digital age that sounds oddly unplugged, flawed and human. An unmistakably lovely antidote to the opiating nostalgia of our time.

Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels's "Tatemono (建物)" via LAAPS "Tomoyoshi Date and Stijn Hüwels met for the first time in 2015 in Tokyo, being introduced to each other by Chihei Hatakeyama. That same evening, they recorded what would later become Hochu-Ekki-Tou, their first album, released on Home Normal in 2019, followed by 遠き火、遠き雲 (A Distant Fire, A Distant Cloud) in 2021 on LAAPS. Tomoyoshi Date creates acoustic and organic sounds with a little touch of digital processing. He began to create electronic music in 1998. In 2003, he forms the group Opitope with Chihei Hatakeyama (released by SPEKK), in 2012 the group ILLUHA with Corey Fuller (released by 12k), and the group Melodia with Federico Durand (Home Normal). His solo albums were released from Flyrec (2009, Japan) and Own Records (2011, Luxembourg). Also he worked as emergency doctor until 2014, and started his ambient oriental medical clinic "Tsuyukusa Clinic" in Tokyo since 2014. Tomoyoshi currently resides in Narita, close to Tokyo. Stijn Hüwels has a profound fascination for minimalism. He's using mainly layers of processed guitar and field recordings. He released on Dauw, mAtter, Eilean Rec., Home Normal, White Paddy Mountain and Slowcraft/Lifelines. He released albums in collaboration with Chihei Hatakeyama, Norihito Suda, An Moku and Ian Hawgood. Together with James Murray he forms Silent Vigils. Stijn lives and works in Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. He's also curating Slaapwel Records since 2014, a label dedicated to music to fall asleep with."

Aquainted through their shared love of music technology, and now a friendship, this is the second-time pairing between two well-known musicians from the ambient and electronic scene since some decades: the German artist Arovane and the American artist Taylor Deupree. After their first release together in November 2022, "Skal_Ghost" on 12K, this new release explore once more an organic journey built around loops and layers or processed and re-processed sounds giving this particular color to a new must-have album.

Michèle Lamy and Ryoji Ikeda release collaborative record via VF Featuring two new tracks, including a recording from The Listening Room at 180 Studios. Michèle Lamy and Ryoji Ikeda have released a new collaborative record via The Vinyl Factory. Featuring music created and produced by Ikeda, with lyrics and vocals by Lamy, the release brings together two recordings made almost four years apart, in Los Angeles and London. On side A, "Echoes of Rights" was recorded at EQT Recordings in Los Angeles between 15 and 18 May 2022. The flip side features “Echoes of Nights”, recorded on 22 February 2026 at The Listening Room, 180 Studios. The sleeve looks back further into their collaborative relationship, featuring a photograph of a live performance in Basel in 2021. Michèle Lamy x Ryoji Ikeda follows a series of Ryoji Ikeda releases from VF. September saw new Ikeda material on music for strings, alongside reissues of code name: A-Z and the solar system. Coinciding with the new release, Ryoji Ikeda's site-specific audio-visual installation data-cosm [n°1] returns to 180 Studios from October 14 to December 20. Limited to 500 copies, the record is pressed on 180-gram heavyweight red vinyl at The Vinyl Factory’s Hayes pressing plant, using the EMI 1400, and mastered for vinyl by Noel Summerville. Michèle Lamy x Ryoji Ikeda is available now from the VF store. Book tickets for data-cosm [n°1] at 180 Studios here.

Come Back Down, the new album by Nashville experimental-pop duo Total Wife, was born from the edge of sleep. When composer and producer Luna Kupper would begin to fall asleep during late-night mixing sessions, the songs would follow her into the halfway place between dream and lucidity. Like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, she’d wake with a new perspective on the puzzle she was piecing together. “I’m a psychological mixer — I’m trying to think of how someone’s experiencing the sound, versus getting stuck in trying to make all these different tones and using all this gear to make something sound a certain way,” Kupper says. And like a spiral from waking life into dream, the songs on Come Back Down are endlessly self-referential, building whole universes from a single point. Kupper sold all of her synths to make rent before she started working on the album, and so every inorganic sound is instead built from samples of the band’s own work. A guitar on one song may be reprocessed and used as a synth on the next, while everywhere on the album vocal samples are taken from a single unreleased cover of Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars.” In tribute to this process, the album was almost named The Julia Set after the mathematical equation which feeds into itself again and again, creating beautiful fractal images. The intention was to create something complex but accessible; experimental, yet precise and without abstraction. In her lyrics, too, main vocalist and co-composer Ash Richter is as straightforward as she’s ever been. She drew on her experience of pandemic isolation to write about connection and disconnection, using her lyrics as a tool for the communication that was missing in everyday life. On the soaring, shoegazey track “peaches”, a storm that forced the cancellation of a recording session became a metaphor for emotional distance. “still asleep” chronicles Richter’s euphoria after Total Wife’s first tour, and watches it begin to curdle into paranoia. “Thank the full moon, my heart is overflowing,” she sings, before: “Is there such a thing as too happy?” The experience of isolation was prompting Richter to think back to her childhood, a time marked for her by solitude and natural play — climbing trees, making mud pies, getting lost in the woods. On tracks like “in my head” and “second spring”, she uses the imagery of nature to recall that time and forge a connection with her lonely inner child. “I feel connected with transcendentalist writing and magical realism — trying to convey things in a concrete way, but with that element of psychology and mystery,” she says. Richter and Kupper, friends from high school, formed Total Wife in 2016, relocating from Boston to Nashville in 2020. Both are visual artists as well as musicians, which they incorporate into their work with Total Wife via layered and purposeful visuals. A DIY streak underpins everything that they do — from handling their own artwork and music videos to recording their own music, releasing tapes through their label Ivy Eat Home, and hosting house shows in the basement they’ve christened Ryman 2. In Nashville they’ve settled into a weirdo scene living under the record industry’s floorboards, a hive of collaborative and creative energy that has made them excited to call the city home. They also assembled a live band for the first time shortly after moving to Nashville, consisting of Ryan Bigelow, Sean Booz and Billy Campbell — injecting their creative process with a jolt of spontaneity and aliveness that has fed back into Come Back Down.