RPM by D.Bespoke

Thirty seats, one selector, no requests. The shochu is the only thing you get to choose.

Go to RPM when you would rather listen than talk. It is a listening bar in the Japanese kissaten mould on Duxton Road, from Daiki Kanetaka of the cocktail bar D.Bespoke, and what separates it from the city's other vinyl rooms is the spirit behind the bar: shochu rather than whisky. The compromise is control. Requests aren't taken, so you get the selector's evening, not yours; go solo or as a pair and sit near the speakers.

The room is wrapped in floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving packed with vintage vinyl – funk, jazz, Japanese city pop and local classics – playing through big vintage JBL speakers. Kanetaka is a former singer, and his own records are on those shelves. There are 30 seats, enough to feel social without the music sliding into background noise, and a private room with premium turntables for anyone who wants to go deeper. Kentaro Satoh runs the bar. Think of it as D.Bespoke's younger brother: same craft, looser collar.

Shochu, Japan's distilled spirit made from grains and vegetables, is sold neat by the glass or the bottle, and goes into lemon sours, a dark and stormy, negronis and the barrel-aged Taimatsu. The drink to order is the Mariel, which mixes rum with coconut water, orange juice, honey, absinthe and cinnamon; ask for the rum to be swapped for the Nagasaki barley shochu, which the bar will do, and you have the drink that explains the place. Japanese whiskies are there for anyone who came for whisky regardless. Prices are in the facts box.

The bar has also run by day as a kissaten-style café, with slow-drip coffee, a retro melon cream soda float and bossa nova on the speakers, which would make it the rare bar you can scout over coffee before committing to at night. The hours we have are for the evening only, so check Instagram before you go in daylight.

How to do it well: come on a weeknight, early in the evening, while the seats near the JBLs are still yours to choose. It's closed on Mondays, and Tanjong Pagar and Outram Park MRT are both a short walk. Order one sour, settle in and leave the music to the selector (asking for a song is the one way to make an enemy here). The best case is hearing a city-pop track you have never heard before and finding the evening has made other plans.

Good to know 16 Duxton Road; open from 6pm and closed on Mondays. Check Instagram (@rpm_singapore) for current hours, including any daytime café sessions. Tanjong Pagar and Outram Park MRT are both a short walk.

RPM by D.Bespoke | 16 Duxton Road, Singapore 089482 | Nearest MRT: Tanjong Pagar, Outram Park