As you may have noticed, Virgil Abloh has been more or less killing it over the last few years. Off-White, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Evian, Moët, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and on and on: the number and quality of prestige brands, collaborations, and venues surfacing the designer’s creative output continues to mount and impress. It’s no less the case with his latest release, a series of digital turntables, mixers and other equipment produced with audio tech company Pioneer DJ.
See-through and lit up like Christmas, these revamps of the brand’s now classic CDJ and DJM units are just one small part of Abloh’s exhibition at MCA, “Figures of Speech,” a collection of his fashion, design, and artworks on view from June 10 to September 22. While there’s no word on whether Pioneer will actually sell the gear—or how much they would cost—as of yet, the pieces are indeed fully functional as the designer’s recent DJ set at Coachella proved. (Surface knows firsthand what Abloh can do on the decks.) For now, they’re less market items than they are examples of Abloh continuing to reach out to new brands and new mediums while also pointing back to musical associations that helped bring his name and style to the attention of millions. Also, they’re almost impossibly hype.