DISPOSABLE MUSIC: INSIGHT
HOXTON VINYL ON
PRESSING RECORDS IN 2025
As part of Disposable Music at London Design Festival, we spoke with Hoxton Vinyl - a London-based pressing plant dedicated to turning music into lasting artefacts. At a time when songs appear and disappear in an instant online, their work offers a reminder that music can still be given permanence, weight, and cultural memory.
"Creating a record in 2025 feels like shaping a tangible piece of art that marks time and place in an artist’s journey, cataloguing musical history in a way that lasts. A recent pressing that reflects this is Macbeth. The West End production, starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo, featured a powerful, immersive score by composer Alasdair Macrae. On stage it was visceral and fleeting, but pressing it to vinyl gave the music permanence, transforming it into a work that could be revisited outside the theatre. For us, that captured exactly why vinyl matters in 2025: it gives artistry a physical home, preserving stories that would otherwise vanish once the lights go down."
For Hoxton Vinyl, pressing records is about far more than reproduction. It’s about transforming fleeting performances into something tangible, something that can endure. But how does that permanence fit into a world where music feels increasingly disposable?
"In a world of algorithms and viral trends built on 15-second clips, music is often consumed in fragments and then forgotten. That’s why the art of the long player is so important: the 12" LP encourages people to listen in the way the artist envisioned it in the studio - as a complete body of work, with all the intricacies and small pieces of magic that entails.
Vinyl pushes back against disposability, it asks listeners to slow down, sit with an album, and experience it fully."
Digital music is largely two-dimensional: sound and artwork. Vinyl adds physicality, touch, and more space for creative expression and depth. Here's how Hoxton Vinyl see it extending the possibilities of a release:
"Vinyl isn’t just audio - it’s a canvas for storytelling. With Mr Doodle’s Straight Outta Doodleland, we helped create a 60-page coffee-table book with a 2LP picture disc. Mr Doodle - known worldwide for his distinctive graffiti style -merged his art with music in a way no digital format ever could, turning a record into a world you can step into."
> Watch the Straight Outta Doodleland, Special Edition unboxing
With coloured, shaped, or even liquid-filled records becoming more common, vinyl keeps evolving with the times. We asked Hoxton Vinyl where they see it going next:
"Vinyl is constantly reinventing itself. From splatter and marbled pressings to records that cross into art and design, the format is thriving in new spaces. Looking ahead, we see innovation not just in aesthetics, but in sustainability - recycled and bio-based vinyl will shape the future."
Hoxton Vinyl on two projects in particular that stayed with them and how their cultural significance made all the difference:
"Bashy’s Being Poor Is Expensive is a critically acclaimed classic, earning an Ivor Novello nomination and winning MOBO Album of the Year. It also carries so much shared history and personal resonance. The record tells his story with masterful clarity, playing like the soundscape to a day in North West London - each song a chapter exploring class, race, identity, resilience, and inequality. It blends the sounds of the Windrush community with grime, garage, and jungle. The vinyl itself was symbolic of that cultural continuum: for the Windrush generation, records were how music was passed down and roots were kept alive, especially when the sounds of home weren’t on UK mainstream radio. Decades later, 12" white labels did the same for grime - carrying new riddims across pirate stations and into communities."
> Watch the Being Poor Is Expensive vinyl unboxing
"Dave’s Psychodrama is a defining album of modern British music - a conceptually daring masterpiece that captures the essence of a generation. Structured like a therapy session, it weaves conversations, voicenotes, and stories into a powerful narrative exploring race, mental health, family, and social reality. It debuted at #1 in the UK Album charts, earned both the Mercury Prize and the Brit Award for Album of the Year. The vinyl pressing, with artwork by Dave’s longtime collaborator Tyler Remekie, added another dimension - his art mirrored the raw honesty of the lyrics, making the physical record feel like an extension of the storytelling itself.
Psychodrama and Being Poor Is Expensive are more than records - they are cultural artefacts, deeply rooted in narrative, identity, and time. Pressing them wasn’t just production; it was stewardship of stories that need permanence."
"Vinyl isn’t just audio – it’s a canvas for storytelling."
Hoxton Vinyl have kindly donated an unpressed vinyl puck for Disposable Music, our exhibition for London Design Festival 2025. With this piece we question what defines a song or record in the first place, so to close out our conversation on a more existential tone, we asked them at what moment a song or record becomes valid:
"A song is real the moment it comes to life in someone’s mind. But when it’s pressed to vinyl, it takes on permanence. It fixes the music in time and place, turning it into part of culture - something people can revisit, collect, and pass on. In a world where music can feel disposable, vinyl gives it weight and ensures it lives on with authenticity, legacy, and connection."
MORE ABOUT HOXTON VINYL
> Website
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