Events: Kiku Listening Sessions, presented by on.rcrd
Toronto's weekly vinyl listening room, at 915 Dupont. The gatherings are the whole point. Come as you are, leave with people you didn't know you needed.
Kiku: two seatings, six and eight, doors on the hour, sound at half past, 915 Dupont.
Toronto, ON · Nov 3, 2026
Kiku: Radiohead, Kid A
915 Dupont St · seatings at 6 & 8 PM
8 PM seating sold out, waitlist open. Seats left at 6 PM.
Radiohead in November: four records, one band, each played front to back. We open with Kid A (2000). It came out with no singles and no videos. After OK Computer, Thom Yorke could not finish a song on a guitar, so the band stopped sounding like a band: Everything In Its Right Place moved onto a synthesizer, the horns on The National Anthem were told to sound like a traffic jam, and the vocals were first takes. Eighteen months of work with no deadline, in Paris, Copenhagen, a mansion in Gloucestershire and the band's own barn outside Oxford, and the record that came out of it changed what a rock band was allowed to be.
Toronto, ON · Nov 10, 2026
Kiku: Radiohead, In Rainbows
915 Dupont St · seatings at 6 & 8 PM
Night two: In Rainbows (2007). The band had nearly split, and the record came out with no label behind it, as a download where the price box said it was up to you. Under the stunt is their warmest album: Nude, a song they had tried on three earlier records and finally finished after ten years, and Nigel Godrich recording the fingerprints of the rooms along with the band.
Tickets sold out
Join the waitlist on Eventbrite →
Toronto, ON · Nov 17, 2026
Kiku: Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool
915 Dupont St · seatings at 6 & 8 PM
Night three: A Moon Shaped Pool (2016). The week before it came out, the band wiped their website and their social feeds to blank. The record was made on tape, in a disused mill in the south of France and at home in Oxfordshire, with Jonny Greenwood's strings written first and the orchestra playing them with guitar picks on Burn the Witch. It closes with True Love Waits, a song first played live in 1995 and finished twenty years later. The tracks run in alphabetical order.
Toronto, ON · Nov 24, 2026
Kiku: Radiohead, OK Computer
915 Dupont St · seatings at 6 & 8 PM
Night four, and we close with OK Computer (1997). Most of it was recorded in a mansion near Bath, with the house as an instrument: the vocals on Exit Music sung on a stone staircase, Let Down cut in the ballroom at three in the morning, and the white noise on Climbing Up the Walls made by sixteen violins. Airbag started as the band trying to make a DJ Shadow track. Thom wrote Fitter Happier in ten minutes.
Tickets sold out
Join the waitlist on Eventbrite →
Early access gets next month's ticket link before anyone else. Get early access →
How a night unfolds
Every on.rcrd night is an arc of sound and story, and it moves the way a record does, with a rhythm to it and a shape you can feel.
Come early. There is a full menu of Japanese small plates and cocktails, and time enough to sit with it, and with whoever the evening has placed beside you.
Then the story: the artist, the moment, the culture that made the record and the reason it still matters. You learn what you are about to hear before you hear it.
Then the room is quieted by sound therapy, singing bowls carrying the day out of you until what is left is attention.
And then the album plays. Whole, start to finish, the way it was built to be heard.
When the last note lands, something has shifted. You will feel it in the music, and you will feel it in the people beside you, who will never be gathered in this room in quite this way again.
Then stay. Steven plays until the seating ends, and there is no hurry.
Listening room, answered
- What is there to do in Toronto on a Tuesday night?
- Kiku Listening Sessions run every Tuesday at 915 Dupont St in Toronto. One album is played front to back for a seated room, introduced with the story behind the record and opened with a sound bath. There is a full menu of Japanese small plates and cocktails. Seatings at six and eight, doors on the hour.
- What is a vinyl listening room?
- A room where one record is played all the way through, in order, for people who came to hear it. The idea comes from Japan's jazz kissa, listening bars that have worked this way for decades. A listening bar and a listening room mean the same thing. Kiku, the Japanese word for listen, brings the practice to Toronto.
- Where can I find a listening bar in Toronto?
- 915 Dupont St, near Ossington. Kiku runs there every Tuesday, in a small seated room built around the sound system rather than a bar crowd. on.rcrd also puts on listening nights in other rooms around the city, and any that are booked are listed further up this page.
- Who runs the Kiku Listening Sessions?
- Kiku is a collaboration between on.rcrd and 915 Dupont. Steven Fernandez, who started on.rcrd, picks the theme each month and the records that get played. He hosts the nights when he is in town, and when he is away a guest host takes the session. Whoever is hosting is named with the date above.
- How do I get tickets to on.rcrd events?
- Tickets for on.rcrd events are sold on Eventbrite, linked from every date above. Kiku has one Eventbrite page for the whole month, so pick your night once you are there. The room is small and most weeks sell out, so booking ahead is the safe move. Early access on onrcrd.ca gets each month's ticket link before anyone else.
- Do I need to know the album beforehand?
- No, and coming to a record you have never heard is the best reason to come. Curiosity about music you do not know yet is the point of the room, and nothing about the night assumes you have heard it before. Most of the room is there in that spirit. And if you would rather come for the album you grew up with, that is just as good a reason.
- Can I go to a listening session on my own?
- People do, most weeks. You are seated, the room is dark and everyone is facing the same direction, so arriving alone is easy. It is also one of the few nights out where you end up talking to the person beside you about what you both just heard.
- Do you have to be quiet in a listening room?
- While the album is playing, yes, and it is easier than it sounds. Phones down, nobody talking over the music. Talk before it starts and talk after it ends, and when the record finishes Steven keeps playing until the seating is over, so there is no hurry to leave.