Vinyl Destination: Matiz, São Paulo

Vinyl Destination is a series where we visit new and established crate-digging locations and vinyl focused spaces worldwide to learn about the stories, people and records behind them.

Located in downtown São Paulo, Matiz is a new venue offering a high-fidelity listening experience to fans of vinyl and high quality audio. Drawing influence from Japanese kissa culture and established spots like London’s Brilliant Corners, Public Records in New York and Martha Bar in Tokyo, Matiz opened its doors this September.

After a few months of Matiz providing a space for Brazilian artists and “DJs to play non-dance floor music”, we catch up with the venue’s co-owners Rodrigo Coelho and Yuri Mendonça to learn more about the space.

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Where the idea for Matiz come from?

We were kind of tired of going out and having the same experience in São Paulo, regarding ambience, services, and especially soundwise. So the concept was propelled to a project mostly due to this dissatisfaction among the associates. We had a vision that something was missing in the equation of the nightlife here.

We spent one year from the beginning of the construction to the opening.

What is unique about Matiz?

We are located on an amazing rooftop, with top-grade drinks and food, but what stands apart is that Matiz was conceived from the acoustic project, with studio-level acoustics, a nice 3-way system customised for the room dimensions, and a very powerful rotary mixer. This combination gives us an experience of being in a ‘studio inside a living room inside a bar’.

We want Matiz to go beyond a music bar, becoming a platform that hosts a diversity of artistic expressions and being a safe place for artists to experiment with new kinds of material, not necessarily dance-oriented.

How would you describe vinyl culture in São Paulo?

Despite the fact that vinyl prices skyrocketed here due to international acts purchasing bunches of records and thus elevating the prices for local customers, São Paulo is quickly becoming again the place to dig and discover hidden gems, especially regarding Brazilian music, with record stores thriving in downtown, a kind of comeback to the golden age of vinyl in the city.  

Tell me about your CORE soundsystem.

Being a great local manufacturer that’s already delivering brilliant works for collectives and clubs, we proposed to the guys at CORE a new challenge: to make a hi-fi system customized for our room dimensions, based on a 3-way system with a rare transmission-line subwoofer design that would suit perfectly more organic material, and Milton from CORE just killed it, delivering a flagship product.

What are some of your biggest inspirations for the space?

We were much inspired by the Japanese kissa culture, but everything is different here, and we want to find our own way of making Matiz one of South America’s main destinations for music lovers and artists alike.

Although the concept is vastly seen throughout the world, with major influence from Japan, we think pandemic has accelerated this process locally, since people start to agglomerate in smaller venues, seeking a kind of comfort that spans through the senses.

What are your plans for the future of Matiz?

Keep improving the user experience, to expand our concept to other places in the world, while retaining this aura of a classic venue to visit in São Paulo’s nightlife.

Matiz is located at R. Martins Fontes, 91 – República, São Paulo – SP, 07400-550, Brazil. Find out more here.

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