I visited Spiritland in December just before Christmas, it is located in a recently gentrified part of north London. The area was just waste ground around the railway tracks of Kings Cross, when I was at college in the area, many years ago.
I went on a Sunday morning, probably a quiet time, and managed to meet the chap who runs it, Paul Noble. He has an extensive background in music production and spent some time working in Japan where he discovered bars/cafes dedicated to playing music (mostly jazz) on good quality audio equipment. He was inspired to set up something similar in London. Apparently these establishments originally sprang up in Tokyo in the 1960s and were called” jazz kissaten”
http://thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-fa...-bar-a-vinyl-sanctuary-in-the-midst-of-tokyo/
Paul introduced me to Kevin Scott propitiator of Definitive Audio/Living Voice, he supplied and set up the Audio system in Spiritland.
Kevin gave me a brief run down on the equipment - the speakers share a similar heritage as his vox Olympians - the power amp is a 30 watt all triode from Italy, Atelier du Triode. The large subs have their own active ss amplification. The style is 60/50s to match the retro, soft industrial look of the interior
The front end was playing digital jazz, and sounded very good, I don’t know what the source was.
Unfortunately I did not get to hear the vinyl front end. The TT is a Kuzma XL dc, similar to my own, with two arms a Kuzma ref 313 with the new AT-ART1000 cartridge and a Viv Labs 7” Rigid Float arm (highly recommended by Kevin) fitted with a Kuzma Car cartridge. Kevin told me the vinyl rig still needed some final adjustments.
I was accompanied by my partner who was interviewed by Nicky Stanbridge from the BBC radio 4 today programme. She was doing a piece on the Spiritland concept and in particular how it appealed (or not!) to women. I was not privy to the chat but afterwards my other half told me she voiced her usual views on what she sees as a strange male preoccupation, apparently NS said she did not get it either - but hey that’s not news.
I heard the piece on the radio, it did not include the interviews from when I was there. It was less detailed and spoke about audio generally and had an interview with Colleen Murphy who runs the classic album Sunday events.
Anyway, all in all well worth a visit if you are in North London.
