Come in and tune out: Europe's vinyl junkies embrace the Listening Bar

"This is the Kronos Quartet and Asha Bohsle. I love this album," smiles Paul Noble, seated on a stool opposite me wearing a cloth cap.

From the industrial ceiling hang small spotlight cylinders, super high-spec speakers and a glitter ball. A projector beams mildly psychedelic imagery onto one wall, while another boasts a generous spirits collection that basks invitingly in the effulgence. 

Sonically obsessed from an early age, Noble had a lengthy career with BBC radio, notably producing the much-vaunted Maida Vale sessions. But in 2012, he found himself in Japan, and that's where his idea took shape.

"I went to Japan where they have a tradition of listening bars," he tells Euronews Culture. "And they could be tiny with six seats in them, maybe eight seats in them, and they just play records from start to finish on an amazing sound system. Usually there's a cover charge. So you're kind of already predisposed to go and listen and pay attention. They are all divided by genre so it's kind of an expression of the owner's personal taste so there'll be a jazz bar, there'll be a blues one, a classical music one. There's some kind of soft rock ones. It's nothing to do with club culture. It's nothing to do with DJing. Some might have you know, one turntable one CD player. I just completely fell in love with it. I couldn't get enough of it."

Listening bars have become something of a trend in recent years but since the end of the pandemic (which cut short Spiritland's presence at the Royal Festival Hall) more and more bars are, wittingly or otherwise, becoming seen as part of the audiophile phenomenon.

What qualifies a premises to exist in this burgeoning category, however, is up for debate. After all, what separates a 'listening bar'