A HISTORY OF THE STRANGEST VINYL RECORDS EVER MADE

Music is made by artists so it must be art, right? Indeed, but in physical terms it can also be art beyond the music. And no other format highlights that quite like vinyl.

The history of vinyl is strewn with artistic endeavour, just as it is with gimmickry and perceptibly aimless experimentation. Whatever you make of it all is (probably) up to you.

Size and speed

Let’s start small. Limited to 300 copies, Pea Brain zine’s ADHD EP is a mere two inches wide. It’s the smallest dedicated vinyl record we have found and contains ten-second songs from six Southampton and Portsmouth punk bands. On the face of it that could sound senseless beyond the merit of its absurdity, but plenty of bands come to mind whose songs would benefit from being truncated to a fraction of a minute.

There’s a marginally greater chance you’ll have a 5in record in your collection (or more specifically 4.7in). Back in 2007, German company Optimal Media Production developed the VinylDisc, an