The vinyl edition marks APEX’s transformation from a gallery installation to home listening, aligning with the Deep Listening room’s mission to deliver intimate, high-fidelity experiences with renowned artists.

In the Deep Listening series, The Vinyl Factory presents APEX—a collaboration between Arthur Jafa and Detroit techno pioneer Robert Hood—in the Devon Turnbull Listening Room at 180 Studios as a limited vinyl edition.

The work uses a montage of 100 years of mass-circulated imagery to explore Black representation, life, and resistance through duration, repetition, and tempo, a concept Jafa describes as Black Visual Intonation and as a model for an anti-cinema.

Robert Hood delivers a relentless, hypnotic minimalist techno score that anchors the piece’s meditative texture.

Originating in 2013, APEX is now part of 180 Studios’ Paradigm Shift and comprises 841 still and moving images drawn from cinema, music, news, and personal archives, synchronized to Hood’s score to emphasize rhythm over narrative.

The Vinyl Factory also provides purchase links and Deep Listening video features to explore other artists and installations within the series.

For the vinyl release, APEX is pressed on 180-gram black vinyl with a Jafa-designed sleeve, limited to 1,000 hand-numbered copies.