Essays 5 min read

The Locked Groove

At the end of every side lies a small, perfect loop — the strangest and most beautiful accident of the format.

A macro view of the run-out groove and deadwax at the center of a black vinyl record

The locked groove is the format admitting its own edges — a loop with no exit, the needle tracing the same fraction of a second forever until a hand lifts it away.

Some artists have written locked grooves on purpose: a heartbeat, a held chord, a single word repeating into infinity. It is the closest a record comes to speaking about itself.