Bar Selecta Hawthorn

Bar Selecta is small enough that the booth, bar and listening position all feel like one room. The main bar has only a handful of seats, with a separate lounge behind it, so the venue avoids the usual problem of calling itself a listening bar while behaving like a noisy cocktail room. There is a Tokyo-style influence in the low capacity, analogue audio and vinyl-first programming. The music moves through rare groove, jazz, rock, soul, quiet storm, new wave, disco, funk, reggae, R&B and hip hop. Drinks matter here too, especially sake and Japanese-leaning cocktails, but they do not push the records into the background. Go early if you want the closest version of the room. Later on, the scarcity of seats is part of the experience.