MUSIC lovers in Warrington are being invited to experience their favourite albums in an entirely new way when an immersive listening room opens for two nights in the town’s Cultural Quarter.
The Immersive Music Club will pop up inside Winmarleigh House on Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3, offering members of the public the chance to experience music through a state-of-the-art immersive sound system for £8 per session.
Described as a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese listening bar, the concept puts the music firmly centre stage.
Rather than a conventional bar or concert, audiences will enter an enclosed room fitted with studio-quality speakers surrounding them on all sides – including overhead.
The room will be set up more like a cinema, but without a screen. The lights will be switched off, while subtle psychedelic-era oil projections illuminate the walls as classic albums are played from beginning to end in Dolby Atmos.
Organisers say the three-dimensional sound creates a completely different experience to conventional stereo listening, with sounds positioned from left to right, front to back and above and below the listener.
Visitors will even be encouraged to close their eyes – with eye masks available – and concentrate entirely on the music.
The Warrington-based composer and sound designer behind the project, Rob Colquhoun, says the idea came from his frustration at having nowhere locally to experience immersive music properly.
“For years I was waiting for someone to open a place where music lovers could listen to all these immersive remixes of well-known albums,” he said.
“More and more of it kept dropping all the time, but there was just nowhere to hear it.
“I knew that listening to spatial or immersive music on headphones, AirPods or soundbars is nothing like the experience of hearing it on actual speakers and in the end I just got fed up of waiting and decided to do it myself.”
Rob has developed a system designed to recreate the speaker configuration used in professional recording studios.
“This is the way spatial music was made, and therefore it’s also the way people are supposed to hear it,” he explained.
“However, nobody really wants to install a dozen or more speakers all round their living room walls and ceiling.
“Plus, music is just better experienced in the company of other people, so that’s why we decided to do this.”
Six classic albums
Over the two nights, six albums have been selected for their popularity and the quality of their official immersive mixes.
Friday, October 2
Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Saturday, October 3
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Jeff Buckley – Grace
The Beatles – Abbey Road
Rob says not every album released in immersive audio necessarily translates well, which is why the club has been selective about its programme.
“It’s still a new technology and not every immersive mix sounds good, but all of our albums have been chosen because they sound great in Dolby Atmos, and we only ever play the official releases,” he said.
“Sometimes they can sound quite different to the stereo mixes we have known and loved over many years, and it is always interesting to hear the discussions and people’s opinions afterwards because the music has been heard in a whole new dimension.”
The organisers also see the sessions as an opportunity to rediscover the art of actually sitting down and listening to an album without the distractions of modern life.
In an age of streaming, short-form video and constantly changing content, the Immersive Music Club is deliberately encouraging audiences to slow down and give an album their undivided attention.
Rob describes it as an exercise in “active listening”.
“It’s a chance to rest your eyes and treat your ears,” he said.
“You get the chance to experience all the nuances, the performances, the lyrics and the production in real detail.
“It can be a very intimate and emotional experience and that’s harder to come by these days, to really feel and connect with the music, and the artists that created it.
“You can’t help but feel it because you are literally inside it.”
Tickets for each album session cost **£8 plus booking fee** and are available through Skiddle.
The Warrington event will give local music fans the chance to experience a listening format that is growing in popularity internationally – while hearing six iconic albums in a way they may never have experienced them before.
