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SUBO: Jakarta’s first ‘intimate’ listening bar
Exclusively playing vinyl records through high-quality audio equipment in a basement of a house, SUBO aims to provide a comfortable space for people who simply want to relax and listen to music.
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A visitor browses through SUBO's vinyl collection, which is made up of a lot of vintage music. (Subo/Courtesy of Subo)
A
fter spending a good fifteen minutes trying to locate the address, I found the place I was looking for. It was a unit by the end of a cul-de-sac in a residential area in South Jakarta. A man instructed me to go down to the end of the driveway and open the door by the basement. Inside is a living-room-like space filled with turntables, speakers, rows of records, two tables, chairs and a bar. Some vintage books, upcycled clothes and various memorabilia were also laid or hung on the shelves. Soothing jazz music was coming out of the speakers as I was trying to take it all in.
I was at SUBO, a listening space created by married couple Aria Anggadwipa and Intan Anggita along with their friend Arif Liberto, for people who are keen to listen to music “properly”, in a more comfortable and homey setting, rather than, say, going to a club. The homey aspect may come from the fact that SUBO is literally their home. The couple and their 3-year-old son, Teduh, live upstairs but often come down to the basement to enjoy music.
The couple said the idea for the listening space came about because they wanted to listen to music on sophisticated audio equipment but couldn’t deal anymore with the environments that typically come with it. “Events at clubs start late and we simply can’t leave our child,” Aria said, “Plus, the cigarette smoke is usually brutal.”
At SUBO, visitors are free to take advantage of the high-quality audio equipment Aria and Intan have collected throughout the years and play any record they want from hundreds of titles available—all of which is Aria’s personal collection—from jazz and Motown to old Indonesian keroncong.
Much like an enthusiastic record store keeper, Aria enjoys sharing historical facts about each piece of his collections. He’s also not unwilling to dive into personal anecdotes.
Picking a Djanger Bali 12” record off the shelf, Aria told me that it was one of the limited-edition copies of the first pressing by Saba Records and explained why it’s one of the most important records for Indonesian jazz music.
