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Sound On: Listening Bars Are Making People Pay Attention Again

From Tokyo's kissa to New York and beyond, vinyl-driven spaces are gaining ground as nightlife shifts toward sound, design and a slower kind of social life.

In Tokyo’s hectic Shibuya district, the bespoke wooden speakers beckoning from the double-height wall are the stars of Meikyoku Kissa Lion. Enlivened by a statement chandelier, the dark, moody, Baroque-inspired space—the original, built in 1926, burned down during World War II—has wooed classical music fans for decades. Here, the ambiance is akin to a salon-style concert, with all attention focused on the spinning record of the moment, its sound amplified through those imposing speakers. Phones are hidden away. Even whispering is verboten. As social life increasingly prioritizes connection, Japanese listening rooms, rooted in jazz, are acting as muse. In these discreet sanctuaries, vast stashes of vinyl savored in communal silence take center stage, continuously informing a flood of high-fidelity bars around the world in various permutations.

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For Bobby Carey, co-founder of Singapore-based hospitality consulting firm Studio Ryecroft, the rising allure of listening bars stems from the growing number of international travelers to Japan. Some 20 years ago, when he first visited the country, “there was no English signage, there were no apps. You wouldn’t have found the listening bars,” Carey recalls. Now, they are accessible to the masses, and some are so besotted with the distinctive experience that they are keen to translate it to their own city when they return. “But they can’t replicate it,” adds Carey. “There is a reverence found in Japanese kissa culture. There’s no talking, no photographs. You light your cigarette, have some whisky, and listen to an album from start to finish.”

Copenhagen vinyl bar Bird, launched in 2021, was certainly swayed by the Japanese kissa and its outsized role in championing Western jazz in the post-war periods. At the time, their phonographs drew in local patrons to listen to music that wasn’t otherwise affordable or available. “Today, they still handle the difficult task of making busy people relax,” Bird co-founder Peter Altenburg tells Observer. “This was our humble goal: to make people relax when they enter the room.”

But at both locations of Bird (the original in Frederiksberg and the city center offshoot), guests speak freely, unwinding to music elevated by stellar audio. With the help........

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