Something is happening in SW1. A short stroll from the King’s Road, behind a glass shopfront, is New Forms. Inside, record sleeves decorate the walls: Brian Eno, Nina Simone, Fontaines DC, African Head Charge. Soft soul music plays from a pair of towering blue speaker stacks, interrupted only by the hiss of a coffee machine or the flip of vinyl. By day, New Forms is a co-working space; at night, it’s a listening bar. It feels like somewhere you’d easily stumble across in Hackney; less so in Chelsea.
New Forms was opened in July by the team behind Next Door Records, which has been quietly building a London empire over the last five years via its flagship store and bar in Shepherd’s Bush and the 2024 Stoke Newington follow-up.
“It’s been a dream of ours for a while to create a space that offers more considered drinks and audio,” co-founder Alfie Aukett tells Broadsheet. “We noticed immediately that a lot of the clientele are based around here, but they’re used to travelling outside of the SW postcode because there isn’t anything [similar] here. It’s definitely unusual for the area”.
The spot is part of The Gaumont, a slick new development that will also soon house a rooftop bar and cinema, as well as other creative venues. The new outpost of Islington’s Book Bar sits next door. “We’re hoping we’ll be part of a new wave of art and music in an area that is so rooted in creative history,” Aukett says.
Tthe rotating cocktail menu currently includes an olive-oil Negroni and a raspberry and sage Margarita, and there is a sharp wine list. All the records on the walls are for sale. “We made an effort to show appreciation for where we’re located, so expect punk, reggae and a lot of rare collectibles,” says Aukett. Vinyl-only DJs will take to the decks from Thursday to Saturday, from 7pm until close, and while there’s no food right now, the plan is to eventually serve Basque-style snacks.
The custom interiors by Dougal Sadler Architects, featuring all natural materials, are minimalist with a smidge of tongue-in-cheek surrealism. “The plan was defined by a journey from natural to artificial light, from an outside to an inside – from your first coffee in the morning to last order before closing,” says Sadler, who took inspiration from sources as wide ranging as Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist headquarters in Paris and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He singles out the bespoke lights, which create an “ever-changing display of colour, registering the shift from morning to evening”.
Crucially, New Forms hasn’t opted for style over substance. Listening bars have become something of a buzzword in London in recent years – as Aukett is acutely aware. “It’s easy now to put some speakers up on a wall to make it look fancy, without necessarily showing consideration for the audio experience,” he says. The speakers are custom designed and hand-built by TPI, a British hi-fi brand that uses aerospace-grade materials and precision engineering to achieve impeccable audio. “This is the first place this style of speaker is available for public listening, so we’re working to make it a bit of a showroom for people to hear this level of sound.”
New Forms
9 Chelsea Manor Street, London SW3 3TW
Hours:
Tue to Sun 9am–11pm