Illumination

There’s definitely a quiet ritual when listening to records, especially if you listen alone most of the time like I tend to do. The placing of the stylus in the groove, the small suspension of breath before music emerges from the silence, it all carries weight. Part of that ritual is light. Not the overhead glare of a ceiling bulb, but something deliberate, and maybe intimately theatrical. The right lamp doesn’t just illuminate the record; it can frame the entire act of listening.

Even incense has its place in this. A thin ribbon of smoke curling upward, a faint sweetness or spice hanging in the air, it shifts the room into a different register. The sound becomes not just heard but inhabited. Like the lamp, it isn’t necessary for the music itself, but it shapes the moment, giving listening the texture of ceremony. Heilung make this explicit, incense is an intrinsic part of their performances, a binding agent between music and atmosphere. And it isn’t just a simple stick burning away: mine is a hand-mixed preparation of palo santo, sage, and copal, a resinous and sacred blend that carries its own aura of ritual. That same sense of immersion lingers when I prepare some incense to burn in the room, even a solitary listen can echo the weight of something communal. I admit, there’s probably as much craziness wrapped up in incense lore as there is in audiophilia. It’s something I have done for over 30 years, not necessarily every time I sit down to listen, but some music calls for it. My old band even used to use it on stage back in the day to set the tone of what was to come.

When I listen at night, I often do it in near darkness. The room falls away, the soundstage stretches wider, and the music feels closer, more alive. I’ve always preferred it that way, it deepens the illusion, makes the performance feel as if it’s happening right there in front of me. Out of necessity, there has to be some light over the turntable. Without it, cueing up a record becomes a stupidly fraught endeavour, and the ritual risks a clumsy (probably terminal) end, at least for your cartridge. That small circle of illumination, though, doesn’t ruin the atmosphere. If anything, it adds to it: a single glowing point that frames the act of playing vinyl like a performance unfolding under its own private spotlight.

Audiophiles, being the neurotic creatures they are, have strong preferences here. Some gravitate toward pure functionality: the clip-on LED gooseneck, flexible enough to snake around a rack and spotlight the stylus without flooding the room. Models like the Ikea Jansjö have become something of a cult item in this regard, cheap, simple, and surprisingly effective. Others turn to more design-centric pieces, treating the lamp as an extension of the listening space’s aesthetic.

My own choice has been the Artemide Tolomeo Micro, a modern Italian classic that I’ve had for over 20 years now. It’s a lamp with real presence, yet it never overstates itself. The aluminium arm, counterbalanced with an elegant spring mechanism, gives it a kind of mechanical grace: form following function in a way that feels timeless. Its shade swivels, its reach adjusts with the lightest touch, and it can be directed precisely where its needed.

Others swear by more industrial solutions, like the Luxo L-1 architect’s lamp, the original spring-arm task light, whose DNA the Tolomeo refines. The Luxo has a utilitarian honesty to it, a toolmaker’s charm that feels at home beside gear racks bristling with valves and transformers.

For those who lean towards the romantic rather than the modernist, there’s the classic banker’s lamp, green glass shade, brass base, a warm glow spilling across the platter. It casts a more diffuse pool of light, less clinical, more nostalgic, and it turns the turntable into a kind of library desk for sound.

Then of course there are the boutique hi-fi accessories: dedicated turntable lamps like the Uberlight Flex, marketed specifically to audiophiles, often with dimmable LEDs and heavy metal bases designed to sit on an equipment rack. They tend to be expensive for what they are, but some listeners appreciate their compactness and focused beam.

Lighting, and by extension system design, also reveals something about the listener themselves. Some audio people curate their system aesthetic as carefully as the sound: brushed-aluminium amps lined up like precision instruments, loudspeakers chosen as much for sculptural presence as sonic scale, lighting arranged to give the room a sense of intimacy and ceremony. For other people, it’s less about appearances: gear is simply placed in a room, the concern only for sound, with no thought given to how the environment feels or looks. Neither approach is wrong, but it does change the experience. A beautifully lit turntable in a cohesive space can make the ritual feel more elevated, more intentional. A cluttered room with bare bulbs and mismatched gear can still deliver sonic bliss, but the sense of atmosphere, the theatre of listening, may be lost.

Maybe there is a hidden truth about lamps: they reveal how you choose to see yourself in the act of listening. The right lamp, be it a modern desk light, a vintage banker’s lamp, or something made for fancy pants audiophiles, isn’t just a purely utilitarian contraption lighting the turntable, its adding to the atmosphere.

A lamp isn’t just for light, it sets the moment. When I angle my Artemide down and the platter glows, I know the listening has started. The room disappears, and it’s all about the music.