Factory work: how records get made

Tucked away in the Guardian's Money section the other week was a curious little article about what was supposed to be Britain's only surviving large-scale vinyl record factory, based in Middlesex.


Back in the 1970s it was owned by EMI and used to press 1million records a week, nowadays it's down to 100,000 a month and the equipment is all 40 years old. Check out this slideshow about the place.

It looks like something you'd find at Manchester Science and Industry Museum, just up from the old machines from the cotton mills.

Making records is a messy, sticky job requiring elderly gentlemen in overalls to tinker with large, complicated machines. Lovely. Some things is life are worth sweating over.

It's the equivalent of watching your photographs swim into view in a little basin of chemicals in a dark room you've set up in your cellar, rather than churning digital pictures out of your printer. We all need a little soul in our lives, after all.

However, a few days later, it transpired that the wonderful if rather unimaginatively titled Vinyl Factory had not been the country's only old-school LP producer after all.

Police raided an industrial unit in West London to find two 'German men' presiding over a large pirate vinyl operation involving 200 record 'stampers'. It sounds faintly like something out of 'Allo 'Allo. Presumably an Italian escaped through the toilet window.

Apparently these dastardly German chaps were printing up various hard to find records, including Rolling Stones live bootlegs, and they even the equipment to make coloured vinyl. Perhaps I should put in a cheeky bid to the police for the machinery - after all, it's probably leaking oil over a corner of the station at this very moment.

Most of their output must have made it's way on to Ebay and various record shops, with a fair few collectors nervously checking recent costly purchases for a scent of bratwurst.

Which goes to show that this recent trend for rubbish-sounding but incredibly limited edition records to sell for massive money simply due to their obscurity and lack of availability might not be the best way to invest your money after all.

I'm firmly of the belief that you should buy vinyl to play it, otherwise you're missing out on the best part of the fun.

I might even get hold of a few cheap Stones bootlegs on lovely coloured vinyl now...