The term “Seattle sound” often refers to the heyday of grunge music in the city. But the people behind a new cocktail lounge think Seattle has never sounded better thanks to the high-fidelity listening experience they have created.
Shibuya Hi-Fi opens Thursday in the Ballard neighborhood with a rather simple plan to offer good drinks and good music. The execution is more nuanced, and involves an expertly curated selection of vinyl records spun by world class DJs in the hopes that people who have given over their listening lives to streaming services and algorithms can get back to basics.
“It really is trying to create an experience that we miss,” said Brian Rauschenbach, one of the masterminds behind Shibuya, who was a longtime DJ and who works in tech as the president and chief media officer at Add3, a digital marketing agency.
Rauschenbach is managing partner of the new space alongside Quentin Ertel, an interior designer and musician who owns Havana on Capitol Hill. Ertel said the new club aims to tap into the idea of music as a universal language that brings people together.
“Everybody wants to feel that. Even if they don’t know it, once they feel it, they’re going to know that they’ve been missing it,” Ertel said.
Shibuya is not just a bar with a crate of vinyl records available to use on a corner turntable. A lot of thought has gone into creating a hangout for lovers of analog music.
The space at 4912 Leary Ave. N.W., which was formerly a dance club called The Cedar Room, has undergone a makeover — though the cedar remains — and high-end Hi-Fi equipment and decor has been brought in.
Behind the bar, for instance, a Luxman L-505uXII integrated amplifier and JBL L100 speakers are positioned among the bottles of booze. The main lounge features a DJ booth overlooking assorted seating areas, which include blue booths from Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.
“We’re all music lovers and we’ve been in nightlife forever,” said Supreme La Rock, the internationally known DJ who hosts “Sunday Soul” on KEXP and is the club’s music director. “Most places you walk in, they have two shitty speakers on poles with wires all over. Things should be heard the right way. We care about it and we know other people do, too.”
Appreciation for analog
La Rock and Rauschenbach have traveled and DJ’d extensively, and had experiences in “listening bars” in Japan and in cities around the world. The club takes its name from the Shibuya district of Tokyo, where the founders say their listening concept originates.
“My parents met in a vinyl cafe in the late ’60s,” Rauschenbach said. “The origin story has a personal connection.”
La Rock is known for his expansive musical taste and playing tracks that “break Shazam” — a reference to the audio app used to identify songs and artists.
The club hopes to capture music fans who have been fueling a vinyl records resurgence. During the pandemic year 2020, vinyl record sales soared 29% to $626 million, according to the Record Industry Association of America. Vinyl is now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format.
Fans who left the format for dead when CDs took hold in the 1980s are now choosing vinyl for “collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality,” The New York Times reported.
Shibuya plans to employ about 25 to 30 people, including bar staff and those who will serve as “music attendants” and are being trained on how to properly handle physical media.
“This is how you remove a record from a sleeve, this is how you place a record on a turntable, this is how you drop a stylus,” Ertel said of that training. “It’s kind of a lost art form in a way, a lost listening form.”
Shibuya’s premiere listening experience can be found in a back “Hi-Fi room” that served as a storage space in the previous club. Along with more seating from Benaroya Hall, this room features two large, statement lighting fixtures that Ertel scored from the opera hall’s Founder’s Lounge.
“From one great music institution to a soon-to-be-great music institution,” he said of the design touch.
There are plush couches, chairs and carpet, and a large custom painting by artist Christy Hopkins over the turntable. The club’s key players and investors have spent about $80,000 on this room alone, which features audio equipment, including vintage Klipsch Klipschorn speakers, found at Hawthorne Stereo in Seattle.
GeekWire soundcheck
I was invited to listen to some music during a visit to Shibuya last week. In the Hi-Fi room, I was asked to remove my shoes and take a seat on a couch in my socks for what Rauschenbach referred to as a “mental reset,” to think about things in a different way.
Sitting with Ertel and La Rock, I waited as Rauschenbach dropped the needle on “Flamenco Sketches,” a track on jazz great Miles Davis’ 1959 record “Kind of Blue.” (Here’s a digital link, which sort of defies everything I was instructed to appreciate at Shibuya, but maybe it will set the mood for you.)
It’s difficult to explain just how rich music can sound when the quality of an audio recording and the equipment it is played on are top-notch. To me, it felt like the closest thing to listening to a live performance.
“You don’t know what you’re missing until you get it, so when we serve it you’ll say, ‘Wow,'” said La Rock. “Everybody listens on earbuds and computers. Rudy Van Gelder wasn’t engineering those records to be heard through little computer speakers,” he said, referencing the famed audio engineer who worked with Davis and John Coltrane and other jazz greats.
In the Hi-Fi room, Davis and his band might as well have been there with us. Ertel sat for nine minutes — most of it with his with his eyes closed — taking in the track. I couldn’t help but stand and move around, trying to figure out why I couldn’t find the drummer, who I swore was there playing in one corner.
“There’s an element of theater to it, the idea of listening to music in a different way,” Ertel said. “It’s something that we intentionally want to do to give people a different experience.”
I was told I could bring a few of my favorite records with me, but after hearing Miles Davis like that, I tried to hide them under a couch cushion. But Rauschenbach asked for one and we settled on a slight change of pace with a track called “I Would Hurt a Fly” off Built to Spill’s 1997 album “Perfect From Now On.”
Ertel was already a fan of the Boise, Idaho-based band, but Rauschenbach and La Rock were hearing my selection for the first time. For six minutes, I watched them react to different elements of the track — played on their dream sound system — and I appreciated the power of good audio to, as they had envisioned, bring people together.
After leaving the Hi-Fi room, they insisted we listen to the same song again, played on the system behind the bar.
Rauschenbach later emailed to tell me the record had been added to the club’s permanent vinyl collection.
Liner notes
Shibuya Hi-Fi will be open initially Thursdays (5 p.m. to midnight), Fridays and Saturdays (5 p.m. to 2 a.m.). Curated and themed nights will launch next Wednesday, along with an industry focused night on a day of the week still to be determined.
Reservations are highly recommended, and the main front lounge will be $25 per person and $50 per person for the Hi-Fi room. Both include a seating fee with the rest credited to the customer’s bar bill. The Hi-Fi room will only be open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Walk-ins are welcome for seating on stools at the bar. Booth and table reservations in the main lounge are set for two hours and the Hi-Fi room experience is slated for 90 minutes.
