Mad Cats: A Vinyl Playground Hidden in Shoreditch’s Backstreets

By Rafi Mercer

New Listing

Mad Cats, is one of London’s most respected listening bars — explore more in our London Music Venues guide.

Venue Name: Mad Cats
Address: 6 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DP, United Kingdom
Website: madcats.uk
Phone: +44 20 3884 2070

Mad Cats is one of those names that seems designed to echo in your mind before you’ve even stepped inside. On Redchurch Street in Shoreditch, down a stretch that already hums with fashion boutiques and cocktail dens, it doesn’t try to dominate the street. Instead, it pulls you sideways, into a space that doesn’t quite reveal itself until you’re past the door. Once inside, you realise you’ve stumbled into a vinyl-led refuge that feels half clubhouse, half playground, an environment where music isn’t simply offered but provoked.

The first impression is a room alive with textures — exposed brick, soft lamps, shelves of vinyl stacked with both pride and utility. It doesn’t have the polished sheen of Spiritland or the wood-panelled calm of Brilliant Corners; instead, Mad Cats leans into a playful aesthetic, as if to say that listening can be mischievous as well as reverent. Speakers line the space not like monuments but like friends in the room, ready to raise the conversation a notch. The sound is warm, a little raw around the edges, just enough to keep you aware that what you’re hearing is alive, not museum-clean.

Shoreditch has no shortage of bars that use records as décor, but Mad Cats pushes past the superficial. The turntables are front and centre, and selectors here treat vinyl as a living archive. The nights are eclectic — soul rubbing up against punk, disco melting into deep house, a jazz record dropped without warning to slow the pulse before lifting it again. It feels closer to a conversation than a set, the kind of thing that makes you glance at the deck and wonder how that record sounds so fresh after fifty years of play. The programming attracts heads as much as casuals, and the mix of both keeps the energy fluid.

The bar itself is as important to the atmosphere as the music. Drinks here are imaginative without being pretentious, a cocktail list that nods to both classic Shoreditch mixology and Japanese listening-bar traditions. A Negroni is stirred with a confident hand, but you’ll also find sake-led creations or infusions that reference tropical funk records spinning in the background. It’s a place where the menu feels in conversation with the selector, each sip taking on another layer once the groove deepens.

Mad Cats doesn’t bother to pretend it’s timeless. It feels distinctly of Shoreditch now — lively, unpolished, slightly chaotic but with a beating heart. There’s graffiti-streaked art on the walls, crates of vinyl in constant use, conversations flowing faster than the cocktails. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about being present. And that makes it distinct from the more carefully curated spaces you find elsewhere in the city. Compare it to Nine Lives, where the mood is smooth and tropical, or Jumbi in Peckham, where Afro-Caribbean heritage frames the sound, and you see what makes Mad Cats stand out. It thrives on looseness, on the joy of surprise, on the idea that music is a living, unpredictable thing.

Spend a couple of hours here and you notice the layers of community that form. Locals drifting in after work, DJs dropping in just to hang out, groups who treat it as their private corner of Shoreditch nightlife. There’s a generosity to the room, a sense that you’re welcome to settle in as long as you want, provided you respect the sound. The staff amplify this mood — relaxed, unhurried, part of the night rather than separate from it. You feel less like a customer and more like a participant in something fluid.

What’s striking is how Mad Cats captures the restless spirit of Shoreditch while still anchoring itself in the global listening bar tradition. It’s not Tokyo’s meticulous kissaten, nor Berlin’s rigorous hi-fi dens, but it borrows from both. The reverence for vinyl is there, but it’s matched by a willingness to bend the rules, to throw a curveball track, to let the room shape the evening as much as the selector does. That blend of respect and irreverence is its strength — it knows the tradition but refuses to be bound by it.

Leaving Mad Cats, you walk back onto Redchurch Street and the buzz of Shoreditch nightlife feels louder, sharper, as though you’ve just stepped from one layer of the city into another. You carry with you the echo of records still spinning, the sense of time stretched and warped by music’s ability to pull you out of the rush. It’s not polished, not perfect, but perhaps that’s exactly why it stays with you. Mad Cats doesn’t ask you to treat it as a temple; it asks you to join in, and in that invitation, it feels alive.

Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.

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