Section D · Factory, 4AD, Mute and the catalogue.

What was in the room

Factory numbered everything it touched, including the flyer and the nightclub. 4AD decided what its records looked like before anyone had heard them. Mute followed the synthesiser. These pages treat the label as infrastructure — a set of aesthetic decisions made before the first microphone was placed.

Everything filed under D

• D 01What was in the roomFactory numbered everything it touched, 4AD decided how the records looked, and Mute carried the synthesiser lineage.
• D 02The only part of a pressed record that carries a person’s handwritingMatrix numbers and scratched messages in the runout are the closest thing these records have to a signature.
• D 03The sleeve decided what it wasDesign did as much genre-defining as the music, and it is the part most easily described without reproducing anything.

The other three sections