DJ, music producer Murthovic charts vision to reality of this space of this new Bengaluru listening bar

Middle Room, the newest addition to the exciting universe of the culture and culinary space Conservatory in the city, is a love letter to the era of Bengaluru, which witnessed the city’s legacy bars making it all about music! This era, when music was lived and not just ambient, is what motivated Middle Room’s founders to make a space meant to keep crisp, clean and thoroughly thought-out music program for an immersive listening experience.

Middle Room: Bengaluru's new listening bar revives the city's musical legacy

From the golden ages of rock, jazz and more, to the newest trends in electronic music, Middle Room, with its intended acoustics and a planned music program, is all that the town’s culture aficionados are talking about. To get into the thick of it, music programme cocurator Sri Rama Murthy, better known by his stage alias Murthovic, sits down for a heart-to-heart with Indulge, discussing the initial ideas about the space, how having an analogue tur ntable and intended acoustics lays the foundation for immersive listening, how this space can evolve as an opportunity for vinyl collectors, performers and more.

A DJ, music producer, RJ and an innovative educator and purveyor of dance music, Murthovic believes that Bengaluru’s bars have become “loud.” Although not against this change, he explains that there exists a gap currently wherein bars and similar spaces seem to miss a, “physical, tangible and empathetic connection to a piece of music.” Talking about his initial conversations about Middle Room with Conservatory founder Akhila Srinivas, he says, “It was interesting t o find a person with that kind of vision to do something around an alternate space where music is the hero, but then there is also revelry around food and drinks.”

Middle Room’s musicled curation was inspired by the 1920s Japanese culture of listening bars. “The listening bar culture, the so-called jazz culture, is something that the Japanese began culturally. They had these quiet bars, small joints, which did not even have a selector back in the day. There used to be a bartender who would be fixing the cocktails, but also playing the most exquisite jazz records — even those that were recorded in the US. But the Japanese, being the amazing cultural people they are, picked up this sort of world from them.” Murthovic highlights.

What differentiates a listening bar, you ask? “Jazz bars or the listening bars are predominantly a place where people go to listen to music in silence and not a place where they pick up their calls and do other things. There exist some etiquette guidelines at the entrance so that people, who come in, they come to experience the music in a very treated room,” the artiste enthuses, further adding, “we have taken utmost care about treating this room like how you would treat a theatre or a recording studio.”

The curator also sheds light on how he, along with music programme cocurator Avinash Kumar, intends the music playlist curations to be. Primarily consisting of a highly diverse vinyl collection, amassed from across the world by Murthovic himself, the playlist promises to present a healthy mix of different styles. “It’s a labour of a long period of collecting. Additionally, records are so expensive and physically heavy. And when you put them together, it becomes about 30-40 kgs. I definitely went, an extra mile to put these records together with a deliberate effort in picking up different styles of rock and roll, funk, disco, jazz, ambient electronica, new wave world music, experimental and a bit of pop as well,” he explains.

Murthovic, on a concluding note, shares how they almost lost the chance to procure a flagship Technics turntable from Japan. “We have the Technics Turntables, which are like the flagship thing for anything that is records. They’re only sold in Japan. So even in Japan, they were not ready to export them to us. They said, ‘We won’t export them. If you want to buy it from us, you can come and buy it.’ And what you do after that is not our prerogative’,” he recollects

What happened next? “The day we were leaving was when the turntables got delivered to our hotel, but we were not at the hotel. And because of language and communication gaps to them about picking it up, didn’t go through. So they went back to the warehouse. Then I had to run to the warehouse just five minutes before it shut and, you know, plead that I had to take them before I leave the next day,” he narrates.