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The hear and now

A playground for music lovers, the listening bar is a versatile space that celebrates high-quality audio while supplying a curated list of wine and spirits. Victoria Moore considers the concept and questions whether drink can enhance the aural pleasure

Words by Victoria Moore

The Collection
Spiritland’s London flagship takes inspiration from Japan and its ‘reverential’ audio bars

Inside Spiritland, a bar near King’s Cross station in London, the vibe is mellow and the lighting low on a weekday afternoon. Shazam tells me the track playing over the bespoke sound system – built ‘without compromise’ by Living Voice – is ‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’’ by Paulette and Tanya Winley. I order a flat white and sit and listen, letting my mind unclutter as the beats unfold.

Around London and in cities across the globe, new drinking dens are opening up that are oases for audiophiles – from Club Colima in Mexico City, to Sunset & Vinyl in Los Angeles. Variously called listening bars, hi-fi bars, sound bars or vinyl bars, these are spaces with large vinyl collections, (usually) high-quality audio equipment and impeccable drink lists aimed at creating a chilled-out but immersive musical experience. Their rise coincides with a change in attitudes towards drinking that, for many, has shifted the focus of a night out away from alcohol. Today’s barflies are more discerning about what they drink; and they want something more from a night out, too.

‘There has been a real increase in demand for high-quality audio in nightlife spaces,’ says Jim Hanmer, a director of Jazu, which started life as a series of pop-ups and residencies and now has a permanent home in Deptford, southeast London. The new listening bars take inspiration from the audio bars that sprang up in 1950s Japan, where records were so expensive, and therefore rare, that people would gather together to listen. But, says Hanmer, ‘the original listening bars that came out of Japan after World War II were very different from the ones you find in London and the western world in 2024.’

Kissaten listening bar
New Lisbon listening bar Kissaten, where hi-fi meets high-end whisky on a list devised by spirits writer Dave Broom

Back then, listening bars were silent. ‘You weren’t allowed to talk, it was a more reverential environment,’ Hanmer continues. ‘The atmosphere [in today’s listening bars] obviously depends on the venue and the time of day, but people do expect to talk. We’re a late-night cocktail bar, and we have two DJ slots. The first is 7–11pm, and you definitely get the laid-back vibe earlier on in the evening, with dinner, when we might play hard bop or modal jazz. Then, from 11pm we transform the place, the volume goes up, we move tables and chairs…’

At Spiritland, the energy ebbs and flows according to the time of day. As at most listening bars, you can order food here, but it tends to be incidental, falling into line after the music and the drinks. The day runs according to a musical timetable. At 6pm on weekdays, an album is played from start to finish; the week’s album menu can be found on a board, next to the vinyl stacked on shelves by the back bar. After 7.30pm from Monday to Saturday, the glitter balls go on, lighting effects play across the bare-brick walls, and there’s a live DJ session that is recorded and played back during daytime hours.

London's Corner in the Tate Modern
Corner occupies space in London’s Tate Modern art gallery

Needless to say, listening bars curate their drinks lists as carefully as their music. The menu at Spiritland King’s Cross (the owners also have six new bars in a Lisbon hotel) features a whisky list put together by World Atlas of Whisky author and Club Oenologique contributor Dave Broom. It ranges from Kavalan Select No.2 from Yilan County in Taiwan, to Linkwood 12 Year Old from Speyside in Scotland. But, says Spanish-born bar manager Chris García, it’s cocktails that most people order: ‘That’s what I put all of my effort into.’ His bestseller is a beautiful long drink called Mango & Jasmine, made using the delicate Japanese whisky Suntory Toki. ‘I wanted to play around the flavours of the Toki using mango and an infusion of jasmine pearl tea, and I used a little PX Sherry to blend those notes together.’ García’s Jalapeño & Coconut, a twist on a spicy Margarita, is also popular.

Jazu in southeast London, another den that has adopted the trend for blending drinks with diverse beats

At Corner, Tate Modern’s late-night bar, which has regular sessions hosted by DJs and vinyl collectors, wine also takes a back seat to the cocktails and beer preferred by the younger crowd who go there, according to Hamish Anderson, CEO of Tate Enterprises. He points out that wine choices at Corner are both environmentally friendly and designed to fit into the casual mood. They include a biodynamic Grüner Veltliner and a Beaujolais, both served from keg.

Brilliant Corners in Dalston has a more extensive wine list. Typeset entirely in lower case like an EE Cummings poem, it is notable for offering almost as many orange wines as it does whites and reds. The reds tend towards the bright and juicy, the type of red you would typically chill; among the 11 listed are a Pais from Chile, two Gamays, a Cabernet Franc and a Grolleau blend.

Nikka whiskey, available for easy sipping at Kissaten listening bar
Nikka whisky on the list at Kissaten

You might wonder: are listening and drinking two entirely separate activities? Or is there a link between the music we hear and our perception of the taste of a drink? Perception of all kinds is dependent on the level of attention paid to it. We learn this when we go to the hospital for a blood test and the nurse distracts us as the needle goes in, to make it hurt less. Loud music and bright lights can have a similar impact on the tasting experience, diverting attention, turning down the flavour volume. This is why, in a noisy club, you hardly notice what you are drinking and need stronger, bolder flavours to get cut-through to your attention. Listening bars are a much more mellow experience, so there’s more room to appreciate that carefully curated drinks list.

And if you’re wondering how to match your drink to a specific track, well, it’s not easy to be prescriptive. The dance between the auditory and gustatory senses involved in listening and eating or drinking is highly complex. One study found that how much we enjoy the music we’re hearing might also be linked to what’s in our glass. Research looking at what scientists call the ‘arousal congruence’ of specific pairings of music and smells – meaning how energising we find one compared to another – found that participants who sniffed samples of peppermint, classified as a high-arousal scent, responded more positively to high-tempo (classified as high-arousal) music.

The dance between the auditory and gustatory senses involved in listening and drinking is highly complex

Looking at things the other way around, researchers who observed how people responded to music while eating an ice cream found that participants who liked the music experienced the ice cream as tasting sweeter, while those who did not experienced heightened perceptions of bitterness.

When it comes to wine and music, what you’re listening to can also have an impact on how you perceive what’s in your glass. Psychology professor Dr Adrian North found that playing Carmina Burana, a piece of music that he classified as ‘powerful and heavy’, to students while they drank Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon increased the ratings of ‘powerful and heavy’ given to the wine. On the other hand, playing ‘Slow Breakdown’ by Michael Brook made them more likely to rate the wine ‘mellow and soft’.

The sound system at Jazu listening bar
At Jazu, there’s a vibe shift from 11pm, when the volume goes up and the glitter ball starts to spin

In practice, away from the lab, most bartenders are simply using their intuition to craft a list that suits both the environment and their customers. Speaking personally, whether out or drinking at home, I tend to make drink choices that I feel are congruent with my mood, which means I look for a pep of acidity in a more lively setting and for drinks that are smooth, like tawny Port, or gently thoughtful, like a long whisky cocktail, if things are more mellow.

And I can highly recommend the listening-bar experience, either at night, with friends, or on a Wednesday afternoon entirely on your own. Maybe even with a mellow Mango & Jasmine cocktail.