Look back at The Vinyl Factory releases of 2016

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Featuring Kelela, Ragnar Kjartansson and Massive Attack.

Having cast our eyes over the wold at large in our end of year round-ups, the time has come to return home and share a little of what’s been shipped out from our own front door in the last 12 months. Here are a few of our favourites.

Soundtracking the dark days of winter and early spring, JD Twitch took industrial music and EBM back to the dance floor with his pulse-pounding compilation of underground post-punk So Low, accompanied by an equally crushing 12″ of warped remixes by Helena Hauff and Powell.

At the other end of the spectrum, Kate Simko and her London Electronic Orchestra wove dreamlike synthetic melodies together with classical instrumentation on a brace of 12″s and her self-titled debut LP. We were also proud to give a vinyl debut to the incredibly talented Lail Arad, who revealed herself with The Onion in early 2016.

Having stolen the show with his critically acclaimed multi-screen installation The Visitors at The Vinyl Factory’s Brewer Street Car Park last year, Ragnar took his travelling circus to the Barbican to showcase Bel-Air Glamour Records and release the soundtrack on a gorgeous 5-panel duplex vinyl edition. Of the madcap innovators and Icelandic troubadours from the Bel-Air gang, former Sigur Rós member Kjartan Sveinsson also found time to release a stunning double 10″ Der Klang – the soundtrack to an opera with no actors.

Over the summer our attention turned to Berlin and the 9th annual Berlin Biennale, where a string of collaborations between artists and musicians challenged traditional paradigms with a string of 12″s, that featured the likes of Kelela, Elysia Crampton and Fatima Al Qadiri.

It was also a busy year of regular VF collaborators Massive Attack, who returned with several superb 12″s and EPs, two of which – Ritual Spirit and Dear Friend – were given limited edition releases. Not to mention the return of cosmic forefathers Daniele Baldelli and Manuel Göttsching on Volcano Extravaganza, released as part of The Vinyl Factory’s ongoing work with the explosive Stromboli festival of the same name.

There was even time squeeze out an ultra limited Daft Punk 12″, under the direction of Toilet Paper magazine and a stunning brotherly collaboration between David and Peter Adjaye on Music For Architecture.

The big story of the autumn here at The Vinyl Factory was, of course, The Infinite Mix. the dazzling audio-visual show attracted 80,000 visitors in three months and spawned a number of brilliant vinyl releases by Jeremy Deller, Stan Douglas and Sonic Youth.

And as if that wasn’t enough we’ve rounded out 2016 with releases for South African artist William Kentridge, whose own retrospective show at London’s Whitechapel has been critically acclaimed, a new collaboration between Christian Marclay and the riotous avant garde saxophone of Mats Gustafsson, and a new 12″ from Soulwax, both of which carry a rather fetching etching.

Thank you from the whole team at The Vinyl Factory for your support in 2016 and we looking forward to sharing more exciting releases and projects with you next year.