Rare vinyl featuring Banksy art up for auction

One of just 100 original Banksy album covers ever created is to be sold at auction.

A special vinyl edition of Melody A.M., a 2001 album by Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp, is expected to fetch up to £4,000 when it goes under the hammer at Wessex Auction Rooms in Chippenham, Wiltshire, later.

In 2002 the group sent the elusive Bristol artist 100 blank record sleeves, for which he created a custom stencil design which he then spray painted onto them.

Auctioneer and vinyl specialist Martin Hughes, from Bristol, said the record was "pretty different" from what he usually sold.

"There are very few records in the world that are worth more than a couple hundred pounds," he said.

Banksy rose to prominence after he began spray-painting his now-trademark stencilled designs around Bristol in the early 1990s.

The anonymous artist is now one of the world's most famous street artists.

Another of the 100 hand-painted vinyl sold on the record auction site Discogs for more than £8,000 in 2019, at the time the highest ever sale price recorded on the platform.

The cover shows the duo's name in a standard green, stencilled format, and the overall design resembles pixelated treetops. The debut album proved a huge success, peaking at Number 9 in the official UK albums chart.

Hughes said the vinyl had attracted a lot of interest, adding: "It's a real crossover between modern art collectors and vinyl collectors, both would want it."

He said there had also been strong interest from the US, but he would "really love" the buyer to be someone from Bristol.

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