You can’t throw a vinyl record in London right now without hitting a hi-fi or listening bar. Over the last few years, these audiophile-oriented nightspots have sprouted across the capital, tricked out with specialist high-fidelity sound systems and serving small plates, cocktails and wines. These aren’t your typical London pubs or wine bars – after all, most boozers don’t take this much pride in their DJ line-ups and speakers, or churn through vast record collections.
In Japan, locals have been gathering for decades in tiny bars to listen to records in jazz kissa – or jazz cafes. The phenomenon has spread to Melbourne, Mexico and, in 2016, London, when Spiritland (widely considered the UK’s first listening bar) debuted in King’s Cross. “It took a bit of explaining [to Londoners] that we hadn’t accidentally built a club with a load of chairs and tables in the middle of it,” Spiritland founder and owner Paul Noble, an ex-BBC radio producer, tells Broadsheet. He commissioned a fully bespoke set-up from British audio manufacturer Living Voice, considered a leader in the field by in-the-know audiophiles and music lovers.
While these spaces look a bit different from typical clubs or bars, they also have a distinctive etiquette – one that’s often not apparent on first visit. To help you behave, Broadsheet has asked listening bar owners the big questions. Is dancing allowed? Do they take requests? Can we talk?
“We certainly don’t expect people to sit in silence and revere the music,” Alex Young, co-owner of De Beauvoir’s Goodbye Horses, an airy former pub with a vintage Tannoy Lancaster speaker system from the ’70s, tells Broadsheet. Other listening bar owners agree that you can and should chat over the music; it’s typically set at a volume that means you can still hear the person opposite you.
Each listening bar has a different approach to music. Some, like Spiritland, book DJs most nights. Others, like Goodbye Horses, operate on a staff selector policy and play records in full on a custom-built vinyl sound system that features multiple speakers spaced around the venue for optimal, enveloping sound. Venues similarly vary in their attitudes to requests. Daniella Andriesz, the co-owner of Mad Cats in Shoreditch, says listening bars rarely attract requests as their audiences are there to be guided by the DJs, or listen to the genres each bar is known for playing. Mad Cats “mainly sticks to jazz, soul, blues, funk, disco” she says. On the rare occasions a request is made, co-owner and resident DJ Ed Khoury is happy to acquiesce if he has the album.
“I don’t think we’d be overly precious about someone requesting their favourite tune,” says Young of Goodbye Horses. Spiritland, on the other hand, has a no requests policy. “It’s our one and only rule,” says Noble.
The bar’s layout is also a good pointer for how you should interact with the space – and, crucially, hints at whether you can get up and dance. Andriesz says Mad Cats removes the chairs around its bar and DJ booth to free up space for anybody who wants to bop their heads to the music from 10.30pm. “That area becomes the designated dance floor, and we have people lose themselves to the music,” she says. “It’s not something we discourage unless it blocks the way of service.” By contrast, guests at Spiritland remain seated, it’s table service only and dancing is a firm no. “We’re not going to get the tasers on you,” says Noble. “But there are places to do that and it’s not what we’re about.”
Whatever you do, don’t be a tyrant and police the behaviour of fellow visitors. “We’ve had people sit at the bar,” Young says, “and ask our servers if they can ask the guests nearby to quieten down so that they can listen to the music.”