There’s something genuinely exciting happening in the world of audio design, and it comes packaged in warm wood and a beautifully nostalgic aesthetic. Swedish artist and craftsman Love Hultén has just unveiled a wooden music cabinet that does something no one really asked for, but everyone immediately wants: it plays vinyl records vertically while also housing a full collection of cassette tapes.
Yes, vertically. Your records, standing upright, spinning in a way that feels both physically unlikely and somehow completely right. It’s the kind of design move that makes you stop scrolling, tilt your head, and go, “Wait, how?”
Designer:
Hultén has built a reputation for creating custom, handcrafted audio devices that sit at the crossroads of art, furniture, and technology. His past work includes a synthesizer housed inside a wooden cabinet, retro-inspired tape players, and all manner of beautifully tactile objects that feel more like heirlooms than gadgets. The wooden music cabinet is very much in that tradition, except it’s one of his most complete visions yet.
The cabinet itself is built from rich, natural wood, giving it the warmth and weight you’d expect from a well-made piece of furniture. But the front panel around the record player breaks from the organic material and shifts into light gray metal, a nod to an older vision of futurism. It’s a contrast that works surprisingly well, the wood grounding the piece while the metal gives it a certain retro-industrial cool.
Sound control comes through a row of small, round knobs at the top of the panel, each one labeled for high, mid, and low. Flanking them on both sides are speaker holes arranged in a clean grid pattern, the kind of detail that feels satisfyingly considered. Nothing is there by accident. Everything has a place.
Below the turntable, the cabinet opens up into storage for cassette tapes, with several colorful ones arranged neatly in rows, also stacked vertically to mirror the record player above. The storage section holds up to 12 records. The whole layout feels like Hultén thought carefully about the ritual of listening, giving both formats their own dedicated space without either one feeling like an afterthought.
The design draws clear inspiration from the Rosita Commander Luxus, a 1970 audio unit with that signature high-chair silhouette and a decidedly mid-century European flair. Hultén’s version carries that same upright, almost architectural posture but updates it with his own sense of craft and intention. The result is something that belongs in a well-curated living room or a design studio, not tucked under a TV stand or shoved in a corner.
What makes Hultén’s work so compelling is that it refuses to be just one thing. It’s not purely nostalgic, leaning entirely on the romance of physical media. It’s not purely modern either, chasing specs and wireless connectivity. It lives in the middle, treating analog formats as something worth celebrating rather than merely tolerating, and wrapping them in an object that demands to be looked at as much as listened to. Hultén himself has described his practice as playing with preconceptions about the distinct realms of art and design, breaking patterns of function and aesthetics.
There’s also something worth noting about the moment we’re in. Vinyl sales have been climbing steadily for years, and the cassette tape revival has moved from niche curiosity to genuine cultural moment. Hultén’s music cabinet arrives at exactly the right time, when people aren’t just listening to physical media again but actively thinking about how it fits into their spaces and their identities.
A music cabinet like this isn’t just a player. It’s a statement about what you value, a rejection of invisible, streaming-era audio in favor of something you can touch, organize, and display. It’s the kind of object that starts conversations, the kind people notice the moment they walk into your room. No price or availability has been announced yet, which tracks for a piece this considered. Love Hultén’s creations tend to be custom or limited, made with the patience and intention that mass production simply can’t replicate. Whatever the wait turns out to be, it might just be worth it.
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