Volume[s] Dublin

A static restaurant landscape

Apr 27, 2026

Volume[s] is well named.

This bustling new space on Dublin’s quays is an ambient space. It enfolds you, as sound enfolds you. Where buildings normally contain and direct you and what you do, Volume[s] is different, and feels different.

In the liner notes for his iconic Ambient 1: Music for Airports album, recorded in 1977, Brian Eno wrote that “Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.”. That’s what Volume[s] does. It disassembles what we expect from a building – a centrepiece, a focus, a direction – and gives us a free-floating zone. It’s zen. It feels great. It’s usually jammers.

Another musician, the brilliant guitarist Jeff Parker, describes the music of his ETA IVtet as a style of playing that “is dealing with a static sonic landscape as opposed to something that has a lot of peaks and falls in an arc.”

Volume[s] is Parker’s band, in a building. A static physical landscape.

It has those things that you expect – a floor, walls, a ceiling – but they have been reconfigured to disarm your expectations. Yes, there is a counter, but it looks like an afterthought. Yes, there is a kitchen where they bake their signature bagels, but it’s open to your gaze. Rather than being signposted, the bathroom is almost hidden.

Seating is casual and shared, with a few stools and tables over by the entrance. And yes, you come to Volume[s] to eat the good bagels and the Bailie’s coffee.

But what we really would love to experience in Volume[s] is music, at volume, specifically ambient music in this ambient space, an environment of sound.

Here is Eno again: “An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.”

And so, to get the best of Volume[s] can we suggest that you do what the waitress who brought our bagel to the table did when she herself sat down opposite us to enjoy her lunch: put on a pair of headphones. Get your cans on. Cue up your fave Japanese ambient musicians. Bathe in the volumes in Volume[s] .