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INYL records are, thanks to hipsters and collectors like me, the one physical music format that has continued to increase its sales in the post-CD, digital download era. That said, if you dig deeper and start thinking about perhaps pressing a few LPs of your band’s latest release, you might find that being stuck at the bottom of Africa is not the most conducive geographical location for your oldschool purposes.

Traditionally vinyls are made in a process whereby a master is cut using a lathe machine; this master is then turned into a metal stamper, which is used to press multiple uniform copies of the record.

However, in the days when the CD looked as if it was the music format of the future, South African record labels all sold off their vinyl pressing machines until the only plant left in the region was in Harare. It, too, was recently sold and shipped off overseas.

Today the local vinyl releases you see in shops have been pressed overseas in plants that require minimum orders of 300 copies — hence the “import” stickers you may have noticed on the many still unsold Theuns Jordan records in Musica stores.

So what to do if you’re a small, probably unsigned, up-andcoming band who wants to release on vinyl?

Well, thanks to two computerprogramming, left-of-centre music enthusiasts there is now an option. In his flat in Killarney, Johannesburg, vegan-anarchist Aragorn Eloff has, with his friend Justin Barrow, installed a modernday stereo lathe-cutter for the production of small-run vinyl releases.