Venue Study — Public Records
Gowanus, Brooklyn
The Sound Room
There are clubs that are built to be seen — and then there are rooms built to be felt.
Public Records belongs to the second kind.
The Sound Room is not loud, dramatic, or performative. It is tuned.
Designed for bodies in motion, not content capture.
Where most clubs start with lighting and add speakers later, Public Records started with sound — specifically the OJAS × NNNN system — and built the room around the experience of listening.
This is what gives the Sound Room its gravity:
it asks you to pay attention, but never demands it.
The System
The OJAS × NNNN stack is not a flex — it’s an ethic.
Warm low-end that wraps, not punches
High frequencies that shimmer without cutting
Midrange clarity that lets percussion breathe
Most clubs feel loud.
Public Records feels alive.
The Spaces
Public Records isn’t one room — it’s a continuum of environments, each tuned to a different emotional state.
You don’t choose music here. You choose how you want to feel.
The Atrium
Daylight, plants, soft arrival.
A place to begin without urgency.
Conversations stretch here. Time loosens.
The Atrium is where the night starts, even if you didn’t plan one.
The Nursery (Summer’s soft engine.)
Open air. Green. Shoulders dropped.
House here feels like warm weather — light, social, breathable.
The best afternoons in The Nursery feel like the moment the city remembers it is not made of concrete, but of people.
“If the Sound Room teaches you how to listen, The Nursery teaches you how to breathe.”
Upstairs
Dim light. Wood. Quiet texture.
A room for slower conversations and soft electronic drift.
This is where you go when you want to stay, not end.
Programming
Public Records books DJs who understand:
patience
arc
restraint
emotional tempo
room-awareness
You don’t chase peaks here.
You sink into them.
The Crowd
The best thing about Public Records is not the DJ.
It’s the listeners.
People here look at each other.
They dance with awareness.
Phones are rare.
Attention is shared.
This is one of the few rooms in NYC where you can feel the dancefloor thinking.
When It’s Best
Late evening into deep night.
Lights low. Blends long. Bass steady.
You don’t go here to “go hard.”
You go here to arrive in your body.
One-Line Summary
A house for listening bodies — softened by daylight, deepened by night.
