Ways in
Four doors, one form.
Suggest a room
You know a hall, a bar, a cave or a festival that belongs here. Tell us where it is and why the room matters. A link helps, but a sentence is enough.
Open the form → 02Venues and festivals
Send press photographs, correct a fact on your page, tell us about a season, or invite us to hear the room. Corrections go first.
Open the form → 03Artists and labels
For Pulse, our map and radio of African electronic music. Send a set, a release, an event, or the room you play in. Collectives welcome.
Open the form → 04Press and partners
Interviews, quotes, data from the atlas, or a partnership that respects how we choose rooms. Tell us what you are making and when.
Open the form →How a room gets in
Three tests. No exceptions.
Nobody applies and nobody is listed. A room is written up when it passes all three, whoever told us about it.
Beautiful without the music
You would walk in on a silent afternoon and stop to look. The architecture, the landscape or the age of the place does the first work.
The acoustic is part of it
The reverb, the absorption, the way the room handles bass. The space does work the music can hear, whether that is a shoebox hall or a dry Tokyo listening bar.
Music happens there on purpose
A booked programme, a festival, or a selector playing a real collection to people who came to listen. A piano in the corner of a restaurant does not count.
Listening landscapes are the one label outside the tests: dunes, ruins, a rock at sunrise. Nobody programmes them, and they are in the atlas because the place changes how music sounds and feels. The full method, the five room groups and what gets cut are on the About page.
Field SessionsJanuary to March 2027Thailand, Vietnam, Bali
We are coming to listen.
From January to March 2027, Matt is visiting listening rooms across Thailand, Vietnam and Bali: the bars with serious systems and real collections, and the owners who built them. Each visit becomes a written piece in the atlas, with the room's own photographs where it has them.
If you run a room on that path, say hello. Tell us when you are open, what the system is, and what you play. If you are a traveller who has sat in one of these rooms, tell us which.
Our independence
Chosen on the tests, nothing else.
Rooms are chosen on the three tests. Invitations, guest lists and tickets are welcome, and they are always declared at the foot of a piece. They never decide whether a room is written up, or how. Nothing in the atlas is paid for, and there is no sponsored placement.
If we get something wrong, tell us and we fix it. Every room page says when it was last reviewed.
An honest snapshot
October 2026.
Those are the only numbers we have, and they are the real ones. The atlas is new, and it is growing one room at a time.
Questions
Before you write.
Can a venue pay to be included in the atlas?
No. Nothing in the atlas is paid for, and there is no sponsored placement. A room is included only when it passes the three tests: it is beautiful without the music, the acoustic is part of the listening, and music happens there on purpose.
How long does it take to hear back?
Matt reads every message. We reply to everything about a room, and to press and partnership enquiries. It can take a couple of weeks, because there is one editor, and longer during the Field Sessions in early 2027.
What photographs are useful?
Press photographs of the room itself, with the photographer's name and permission to publish. Landscape frames of at least 2,000 pixels wide work best. Every image on Sonic Paths carries a credit, and we never put text or buttons over a photograph.
Something about our room is wrong. How do we fix it?
Choose Venues and festivals, tell us the page and what should change, and link to a source if there is one. Corrections go first. Every room page says when it was last reviewed, and that date updates when the fix goes in.
What is Pulse?
Pulse is the Sonic Paths map and radio of African electronic music. Artists, labels and collectives can send a set, a release or an event for the desk to hear. Pulse is editorial, like the atlas: nothing is paid for, and a message is a conversation, not a submission queue.
Other ways to reach us
Or simply write.
- Email[email protected]The same inbox the form reaches.
- Instagram@sonicpathsRooms as we find them.
- In personThailand, Vietnam and Bali, January to March 2027.Field Sessions. Say hello from a room, above.
- PublisherQuiet Build, Newcastle upon TyneSonic Paths is made by Quiet Build. Sister venture: Phrase Path.