Climb the stairs at 89 Ridley Road, above the fabric rolls, fruit stalls and fish counters of one of London’s oldest market streets, and the din of Dalston falls away into a wide, plant filled first floor lined with records. Hidden Sounds has been trading from this room since 2020, and it remains one of the most rewarding places to dig in east London.
Background / History
Hidden Sounds was started by Francesco Ferrari and Alex Pato, two friends who met through DJing and spent several years travelling between Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and London, filming conversations with DJs, collectors and shop owners and building a substantial record collection of their own along the way. A run of pop ups around the capital led to their first permanent shop on Cambridge Heath Road in Bethnal Green, which opened in November 2019. Six months later they moved east to the first floor at 89 Ridley Road, opening in July 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. Much of the early stock came straight from their own shelves. These days records arrive steadily from London DJs thinning out their collections, and the shop buys as readily as it sells.
What You’ll Find
The split runs at roughly half second hand and half new releases, kept in wooden crates with hand written dividers for reggae and dub, soundtracks, psych, hip hop, jazz, funk and soul, pop, rock and folk, and rows of various 12 inch singles. The buying leans towards club and outer edge listening, taking in house, techno, trance, jungle and breakbeat, ambient and experimental, industrial, EBM, post punk and krautrock, alongside disco, synth, Balearic, Afro and dub techno, with plenty of world and library obscurities threaded through. Hi-fi equipment sits alongside the records, and a turntable and rotary mixer at the counter mean anything can be pulled from the sleeve and played.
Experience / Atmosphere
The room itself does much of the work: exposed concrete beams, big windows, houseplants, a mirror ball turning above the crates and a pair of vintage horn loaded speakers doing the talking. A café counter shares the floor, so people drift between coffee, conversation and the racks, and the pace stays unhurried even when the market below is at full tilt. Francesco and Alex are usually behind the decks or the counter, quick to pull something out for you and easy to talk to whether you arrive with a want list or no idea at all. The space doubles as a venue, with DJ sets and label sessions bringing the sound system properly to life.
Why Visit
- An unusually deep selection of club, ambient and experimental vinyl, balanced evenly between second hand finds and new releases
- A large, light first floor room that rewards slow digging, well away from the bustle of Ridley Road market
- Owners who buy collections from London DJs, so the second hand racks turn over constantly
- A proper listening setup and hi-fi equipment for sale, not just records
- Regular DJ sets and label sessions that make the shop a small venue in its own right
Summary
Hidden Sounds rewards anyone willing to look up from the market and climb a staircase. It is a shop built from two personal collections and kept fresh by the DJs who sell into it, run by owners who would rather play you something unexpected than sell you the obvious. Give yourself an hour, take a coffee to the crates, and expect to leave with a record you had never heard of.
