At the top of the stairs, a wall of vintage loudspeakers pulses in slow synchrony, each cone throwing a different colored shadow across the raw concrete floor. This is Reverb, the Vinyl Factory's new group exhibition in Soho, and the first thing that strikes you is that the sound arrives before the light. That inversion—hearing before seeing—is the curatorial gamble that runs through all 22 artist contributions, and for the most part, it pays off.
Curator Sarah Williams, who has worked with the Factory since 2019, frames Reverb as a deliberate response to the "visual fatigue" of the Instagram-era immersive show. "We wanted to restore audio as the primary architecture," she told me during the press walkthrough. "The eye wanders; the ear is captive." To that end, the Factory's in-house mastering engineers mixed the exhibition in ambisonic sound, threading a 12-channel system through the building's three interlocking halls.
What You'll Actually See—and Hear
The central hall is dominated by a commissioned score from composer and producer Loraine James, played across that suspended speaker array. James's piece shifts between brittle UK garage rhythms and dissolving ambient passages, and the spatial mix means the tempo seems to quicken or slacken depending on where you stand. Move toward the eastern wall and the bass drops out almost entirely, leaving only a ghostly synthesizer line that syncs with a strobe-lit projection by visual artist Rosa Menkman.
Among the 22 contributors, sound artist Yvette Jackson has installed the show's most technically demanding work: a reactive frequency room where visitors trigger infrared sensors simply by walking through. The sensors warp both the projected image—vast slow-moving stripes of interference—and the accompanying drone, so no two encounters are identical. On the afternoon I visited, a group of teenagers discovered that clustering together in one corner collapsed the frequency into a single piercing tone, then scattered laughing as a gallery attendant gently reset the system.
Other standouts include sculptor Haroon Mirza, who has rebuilt a 1970s disco light rig to respond to electromagnetic interference rather than a beat, and the duo Semiconductor, whose film Black Rain—here remixed for a 7.1 surround environment—pairs solar imagery with a score derived from raw satellite data. The effect is less dance floor than observatory, and that tonal variety keeps the exhibition from collapsing into the generic euphoria that plagues so many immersive experiences.
The Vinyl Factory's Reputation on the Line
The venue matters. The Vinyl Factory is not a white-cube startup with venture capital and a projection budget; it is the last major vinyl pressing plant in the UK, and its exhibition program has historically leaned toward works that interrogate the physical culture of recorded sound. Reverb represents its most ambitious pivot yet into large-scale sensory installation, and the stakes are visible in the production values. The speaker cabinets are vintage EMI models sourced from Abbey Road Studios. The cabling is exposed and color-coded, a deliberate design choice that treats infrastructure as aesthetic.
That said, the show is not without its weaker moments. A corridor of "sonic mirrors" by an unnamed collective feels underdeveloped—essentially parabolic dishes that whisper delayed fragments of conversation back at you, a concept executed more powerfully at the Science Museum a decade ago. And the final room, a pitch-black anechoic chamber intended as a palate cleanser, will test the patience of visitors who have already spent an hour on their feet.
Practical Information
Reverb runs through 15 September 2024 at The Vinyl Factory, 18 Marshall Street, London W1F 7BE. Tickets are £18 (£12 concessions), with late openings on Thursdays until 9pm. Capacity is capped at 40 visitors per timed slot, which is worth booking in advance—Jackson's reactive room creates a genuine bottleneck at peak times.
Step inside, and the outside world muffles quickly. Exactly as the title promises.
