[ Clouds of the West's "Glass Radio" playing ]
♪♪
-When you're listening to vinyl,
I mean, you have to be physically present.
You have to clean the record when it goes onto the turntable.
You have to drop the needle.
When it's done, you have to get up,
move the tonearm over, flip the record, clean the record,
and then drop the needle again.
And so it requires you to be present in the space
in a way that sort of a, a never-ending playlist doesn't.
-♪ The youngest of them all ♪
-So we are in the hi-fi room at Shibuya Hi-Fi.
This is a space that is dedicated to listening,
so people listen here.
We pride ourselves in helping people
kind of tune out the noise of the modern world.
People come in, they have a cocktail
in the lounge out front,
and then they come back here, kick off their shoes --
so when you come to Shibuya Hi-Fi,
make sure you wear nice socks.
For 40 minutes, you're really spending time
with people you may or may not know,
and you're listening to a record that everyone loves together.
-This is it.
Our band is called Clouds of the West.
-We do about 80 records a month.
You can kind of look at our schedule,
and it sort of takes you through a tour of recorded music.
If there's anything that we love and sounds good, we'll play it.
♪♪
-♪ If I see the world aflame, I will do it ♪
-We've got one of the most amazing sound systems
that you'll find in this town or anywhere.
That's a Technics 1300G turntable.
The amplifier that we have
is a Luxman 505uXII hand-assembled in Japan.
We've got two sets of speakers in the hi-fi room here.
The smaller ones are ATC SCM50s.
The larger speakers in the corner are Klipschorns.
They were built by Paul Klipsch himself.
Klipschorns are known for their bountiful bottom end.
I mean, you can listen to a Bud Powell piano record
on there, and it's astonishing.
You can also listen to Led Zeppelin IV,
and it's thunderous.
So it can get down to some real kind of nuanced, soft music,
and it can get as loud as you want it to get.
[ Clouds of the West's "All I Want" playing ]
I think of all the artistic forms of expression,
I mean, music is the one that we all seem to have in common.
You can just feel a beat.
The music is what appeals to people,
but it's also the act of listening to music
that really resonates with people.
[ Clouds of the West's "All I Want" playing ]
♪♪