GRAPES KITASANDO UNDERGROUND

One day, the basement space directly beneath GRAPES KITASANDO became vacant.

It, too, had been a live music venue. After the pandemic, live venues had been hit even harder than restaurants.

We talked it over with Takahashi. Let's build another wonderful live venue here. One more place in Tokyo where new music can take root and grow. There was no reason to hesitate. Building a live venue here was decided almost as a matter of course.

The basement has an atmosphere completely different from the first floor. Where the first floor connects to the street through glass, here, at the bottom of the stairs, is a space that feels every inch a live music venue.

The first floor already exists as a live venue. So for the basement, we also wanted the feel of a lounge, of a bar. A place to unwind over a glass, and a small live venue too. We set out to create a place that could gracefully change its form.

And this basement carries an air even more underground than the floor above.

The artists who emerge from here will likely be ones still without a name, still untouched by any color. On this small stage they will gradually take on their colors, then move up to the first floor, and eventually spread their wings toward even bigger stages. We could picture it vividly.

From that image, the venue was named “grayscale.” That was in 2024. The space is built around gray, a place with no color of its own — a stage that interferes with no color, and brings out each performer's own.

In autumn 2026, the venue inherited a new name: GRAPES KITASANDO UNDERGROUND. So that the first floor and the basement could be bound more closely as one. A promise that the path from here to the first floor, and beyond, is one continuous road.

A keyboard stands permanently on the stage. On nights with no performances, we sometimes open the doors as a bar. Some nights, glass in hand, you can watch the first-floor stage on a screen. Even the hush of waiting for the sound is part of time in this basement.

There are artists and musicians who, hearts pounding, set out to play sounds no one has ever heard.

To them we want to give wings — small, but sure. That is the kind of place we hope to grow GRAPES KITASANDO UNDERGROUND into.