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They produce what Barrow quips is “peak hipster, craft vinyl” — except, “You don’t make as much money as you would if you were making craft beer.”

“Let’s never ever say that again,” says Eloff, who is standing over the machine holding a thermometer and waiting for the optimal 45°C temperature at which the needle can begin to cut a groove in the hard surface of the specially-imported-fromGermany polymer plastic blank waiting on the turntable to be turned into a record. ARROW, who used to run the Aware Records store in Braamfontein, and Eloff, who still works in computer programming, both shared an interest in the lathe cutting process, which they had independently heard of from friends overseas.

Eloff began researching the process, discovering an insular world surrounded by “mystique and pedantry”, where enthusiasts “discuss all sorts of stuff on a very high level of sound engineering expertise” on sites like the Secret Society of Lathe Trolls.

Old lathe machines from the ’50s and ’60s are still in existence, but Eloff found they were “expensive, impossible to find, usually falling to pieces, you can’t get them repaired, [and] they cut in mono”.

Eloff did learn of a modern