An atlas of the world's great rooms to hear music in, chosen for how they sound and where they stand. A cave in Andalucía, a red-rocks amphitheatre in Colorado, a jazz basement in Greenwich Village. Where to go, when to go, and what you will hear.
The night after the Mercury Prize, Newcastle's Knats opened their tour in the concert room of a working men's club in North Shields, with bingo on the calendar downstairs and Man Power on the decks after. I went in the rain with…
By Matt Renton · 26 October 2026 · 8 min read · North Shields, United Kingdom
Trip of the Month: Nyege Nyege on the Nile. Plus London's new listening bar at the Barbican, a checklist for telling a real one, Kampire's records, and the Elbphilharmonie at ten.
Running time 40 min · 8 pieces · read as one page or piece by piece
Open the issue →19 to 22 November 2026 · Kalagala Falls (Jinja), Uganda
Four days, seven stages and more than 200 artists at Kalagala Falls, 19 to 22 November, with the African Electronic Music Conference the three days before. The eleventh…
21 October 2026 · 4 minBorn in Kenya to Ugandan parents, raised on her father's records in Ndola, Zambia, and a core member of Kampala's Nyege Nyege…
21 October 2026 · 3 minSpiritland opened a hundred-seat room on Level 2 of London's concrete arts centre on 20 October 2026, with a pair of Living Voice…
21 October 2026 · 4 minLondon got three listening bars in eight weeks and a published backlash. Here is a five-part test for telling a real one from a…
21 October 2026 · 5 minHamburg's glass wave on a brick warehouse turns ten on 11 January 2027, and the anniversary season is as good a reason as any to…
Hamburg, Germany · 21 October 2026 · 5 minThe night after the Mercury Prize, Newcastle's Knats opened their tour in the concert room of a working men's club in North…
North Shields, United Kingdom · 26 October 2026 · 8 minOn the closing night of Time by Luxmuralis, I walked into some of the earliest rib vaults in Europe and was carried, in…
Durham, United Kingdom · 26 October 2026 · 5 minThirty years of meaning to see Moby play live, settled on a sold-out Saturday in a square Christopher Wren built for sailors…
London (Greenwich), United Kingdom · 26 October 2026 · 6 minMatt's first-person notes from rooms he has stood in, with his own photographs and film. On the Doorstep is the North East; Away is everywhere else.
Dated, sourced and short. The moments worth planning a trip around, and the rooms in the atlas that are at their best right now.
The 11th Nyege Nyege runs 19 to 22 November 2026 at Kalagala Falls on the Nile, with seven stages and more than 300 artists from over 40 countries. DJ Luke Hekate headlines.
Source: Nyege Nyege (organiser). Check the organiser for final times before you book.
Sunday Jump nights are the headline, when Femi Kuti and the Positive Force play 4-hour sets.
October to May, the main classical and opera season. Concerts most evenings, Cairo Symphony Orchestra Saturday nights, Opera Company productions in…
October to April, the dry season. Traditional Vietnamese music and ballet programming runs year-round on Tuesday and Friday evenings…
October to February, the post-monsoon dry season. Tata Theatre Hindustani classical season runs through this window.
37 cities, 213 artists and 113 sets you can press play on, mapped and written up city by city. The scenes, the collectives, the rooms, and the people pushing singeli, gqom, amapiano and the rest.
93 artist-hosted sets one after another through the artists’ own players. No sign-up, no app. Press play and leave it on.
Listen →
KampireKampala · 3 setsNyege Nyege core member; she says gqom is the one genre that makes her mix across styles.
DJ TravellaDar es Salaam · 1 setRA calls RA.984 a mix from the future: a 23-year-old pushing singeli into faster, more frenetic territory.
SlikbackNairobi · 2 setsHakuna Kulala, then Planet Mu, then his own Xternal Domain; a Mary Anne Hobbs mix for 6 Music.Next: West Africa, Lagos and Accra
The listening bar was invented in a Yokohama coffee shop in 1933, exported through London and Brooklyn, and has now reached Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Twenty rooms, each with its own page, and a question the whole movement is still…
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Rooms built to be listened to, from 1888 Amsterdam to Frank Gehry in Los Angeles.
Where the place is half the line-up: deserts, rivers, fortresses and fields.
Listening bars, basements and warehouses where the room does the talking.
Caves, dunes, canyons and amphitheatres cut into rock.
Temples, palaces and pyramids where music was ritual long before it was a night out.
Twelve from the atlas. Every one has a page with when to go, how to get there and what it sounds like inside.
Routes that join the rooms into a journey you can actually take.
The continent's afterparty. 5 curated venues stitched into a single editorial route by Sonic Paths.
Phones forbidden. Vinyl-only. 3 curated venues stitched into a single editorial route by Sonic Paths.
From the playa to the post-industrial. 4 curated venues stitched into a single editorial route by Sonic Paths.
Rooms as we find them: the Knats night, Durham in the dark, the next trip. Everything here is the real thing, shot by us.
One email a month: the new edition, the Trip of the Month, and what changed in the rooms. The sign-up form is coming; until then, follow @sonicpaths on Instagram or write to hello@sonicpaths.co and we will add you by hand.
The room is the instrument.
Sonic Paths is for people who travel to hear things. Every room here is chosen for what the place does to the sound, and written up so you know when to go and what you will hear when you get there.
Why we built it →
