Sydney’s best breweries are turning into hi-fi listening bars for Autumn

• Sonos will fit five Sydney breweries with state-of-the-art sound systems for an immersive music series.
• DJ Andrew Levins will lead listening sessions for classic albums from the likes of INXS, Pink Floyd and OutKast.
• The Inner West Ale Trail is a newly formed collection of breweries in Sydney suburbs like Marrickville and Newtown.
• READ MORE: These are all the new openings come to Sydney this year.

The art of the Japanese listening bar has inspired the world’s most cosmopolitan drinking scenes for years.

Sydney has been the most recent culprit with the likes of Merivale’s JAM Record Bar, Solotel’s Rekodo and Swillhouse’s Caterpillar Club all anchored by expensive vinyl collections.

Yet head to any of those three venues and the entire point of a listening bar is lost. The whole concept spins around the idea of talking less and listening more. Go to any of the major listening bars in Tokyo, like Shimokita’s Little Soul Cafe, Shibuya’s JBS or Shinjuku’s Bar RPM, and you’ll see that people are there primarily to appreciate the music, listening intently as high fidelity speakers and acoustic design are worked to reveal the idiosyncrasies of a fully mastered recording.

You won’t find much listening to any of Sydney’s listening bars. But perhaps adding a bit more intention to it might help.

That’s the idea behind All Ears, a new initiative from Sydney’s transformative Office of the 24-Hour Economy Commissioner, the newly-conceived Inner West Ale Trail, and hi-fi specialists Sonos.

Across March and April, All Ears will transform five of the inner west’s most popular breweries into immersive sonic spaces for a series of listening experiences, each centered around one pioneering album.

The series comes as Sydney’s music scene starts to diversify and becomes vastly more interesting. Big-name tours from the likes of Drake, Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish aside, the city is starting to veer left with its music scene, from cutting-edge Chippendale sound room Phoenix Central Park and rave-loving coffee shop FBR to odd sun-worshipping concert series Sunset Variations.

Local DJ Andrew Levins has been tapped to host the series, which will take place over five nights with one album earmarked for each brewery. The schedule follows:

• Thursday, March 13 – Mixtape Brewery – Pink Floyd x Wizard of Oz “Dark Side of the Rainbow”
• Wednesday, March 19 – Future Brewing – OutKast “Stankonia”
• Wednesday, March 26 – Chuck and Sons Brewing Co – INXS “Kick”
• Thursday, April 3 – Wayward Brewing – Radiohead “Kid A”
• Thursday, April 10 – Wildflower Brewery – Malatu Astatke “Mulatu of Ethiopia”

“It’s about rediscovering the art of truly listening” explained the event’s organisers.

“Guests will step into an environment designed to heighten every note, every lyric, and every layer of sound, powered by Sonos’ state-of-the-art audio system.”

The US-based audio company will go around to each brewery and refit the spaces with cutting-edge sound technology, creating audio ecosystem designed to rework our idea of how live music spaces and hospitality venues work together. The idea is to make each night more immersive, more intimate and more unforgettable, recontextualising these classic albums and giving guests a good reason to sink into some of Sydney’s best brews while they’re at it.

Tickets to each of these brewery listening parties are set at $40pp and include a welcome drink and snack before the album begins. The night doesn’t end after the album is done either. There will be plenty of time for genre-specific selections to complement each record as the night rolls on.

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ALL EARS

Where: Inner West Ale Trail
When: March 13 – April 10, 2025
Price: $40pp

innerwestaletrail.com

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