Down the stairs, past the Wall of Sound and a mammoth digital fireplace, lies Listening Room 7, which might just be the penthouse of 101G. Your inner audiophile will “ooh” and “ahhh” at the classic home audio system mounted on the front wall—yes it’s an original Dieter Rams Braun Hi-Fi component—and the audio-cassette collection, which was supplied by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and is displayed as an artwork in a striking grid on the left wall. And then there’s the record collection itself. Pick an album—Michael’s Off the Wall, perhaps?—settle into the vintage Eames chair and go. The old-school home audio components are seamlessly connected with Sonos’s system for crazy-good, and crazy-clear, sound.
Suggested listening: Brighten the Corners, Pavement. Yes, we’re suggesting a whole album, or as much as you can get through in the 20 minutes you spend in Listening Room 7. The space is tailor-made for rock, and Stephen Malkmus’s 1980s and ’90s indie group Pavement provide a perfect answer to that call with their fourth album. Distorted guitars, insistent high-hat, Malkmus’s sometimes-droaning, sometimes-breaking vocals…the Sonos speakers bring out every brilliant lo-fi element. And track two, “Stereo,” is especially fitting listening in a temple of sound like 101G.
