A blackened brick corner building on a narrow Soho side street holds one of the most carefully considered record shops to open in central London in recent years, spread across three floors and three distinct moods.
Background / History
ROVR began as a 24 hour online radio platform built on human curation rather than algorithmic suggestion, drawing together a worldwide roster of selectors under the idea that music is best passed on by people who love it. In 2025 that principle took physical form at 14 Richmond Buildings, a quiet lane running off Dean Street a few steps from the junction with Old Compton Street. A neglected three storey shell was reworked by Quinn Architects into a single venue with three separate lives: records in the basement, coffee at street level and an exhibition room on the first floor. Signage was developed with YES Studio and applied directly onto the architecture, so the frontage carries little beyond the ROVR logo and a pasted broadsheet listing the platform’s selectors. Much of the existing fabric was retained, with bespoke demountable furniture built in natural materials so the fit out can be reused rather than skipped.
What You’ll Find
The record shop sits in the basement, reached by a steep, ladder like stair that deliberately echoes the stacked vertical shops of 1960s Soho and Denmark Street. Stock is chosen for quality rather than volume, mixing new pressings with second hand copies across electronic, house, disco, soul, funk, psych and the more experimental edges of library and leftfield music. Sleeves are hung along a cherry faced wall as a rotating display, while central plan chests hold the racks proper. Long concrete counters carry inset listening decks, and a pair of large monitor speakers at the far end let staff play records properly rather than at background volume. Books, magazines and printed matter sit alongside the vinyl, together with ROVR’s own merchandise and its Uprising series of seven inch reissues, the first of which revived a pair of mid sixties garage psych sides by The Hooterville Trolley. The ground floor operates as a genuine speciality coffee bar, pouring single origin filters and loose leaf teas alongside pastries, beneath a sash window that opens fully onto the pavement in warm weather. The first floor gallery runs exhibitions drawn from music and visual culture, with past shows including work by Plastic Crimewave and a programme built around Sun Ra.
Experience / Atmosphere
Browsing here is unhurried. The basement is dark, acoustically treated and lit to make sleeves glow against the wood, which encourages the slow, cover by cover reading of a rack rather than a quick flick through. Staff are equally comfortable talking about a pressing or a pour over, and recommendations come readily without any sense of gatekeeping. Because the coffee bar, shop and gallery share one small building, it is easy to arrive for one and stay for all three. In store sessions and coffee cuppings bring in regulars, and the shop has quickly become a fixed point for people who want music suggested to them by a person rather than a feed.
Why Visit
- A tightly edited selection of new and second hand vinyl, strong on electronic, disco, soul and psych.
- Listening decks built into the counters, plus a serious sound system for playing records properly.
- Speciality coffee and loose leaf tea served on the ground floor, with pastries and street side seating.
- A first floor gallery running music led exhibitions alongside the shop.
- Exclusive ROVR pressings, reissues and merchandise you will not find elsewhere.
- A striking, award worthy interior in one of Soho’s quietest corners, moments from Dean Street.
Summary
ROVR Soho takes the unhurried, human led approach of its radio platform and gives it a home. The vinyl is selected rather than stockpiled, the coffee is treated with the same seriousness as the records, and the gallery upstairs keeps the whole building turning over with something new. Whether you are digging for a rare disco twelve, picking up a reissued garage psych single or simply want somewhere calm to sit with a filter coffee in the middle of Soho, it rewards a proper visit.
