Music Director Darren Somerville on Long Playing and the art of designing atmosphere.
You may never see Darren Somerville’s work at The Calile, yet it shapes every moment you spend here.
As the hotel’s Music Director, Darren is the mind behind how The Calile sounds and, in turn, how it feels. From the hum of the lobby to the pulse of the pool deck, from the calm of guest rooms to the open air of James Street, every space carries its own frequency. His role is to make sure they exist in harmony.
The soundtracks you hear are the final layer, the audible thread that ties a seven-storey building and its surrounding precinct together. Beneath them lies a framework of decisions made not by trends or algorithms, but by observation: the way sound reverbs off concrete or the heat of a summer afternoon in Brisbane.
Music for Darren isn’t decoration or background noise. It’s a dialogue between the environment and the humans moving through it. His path has spanned record stores, live performance, production, DJing and formal study, decades of listening that have refined his ear for detail. And after years of curating sound, he’s certain of one thing: context is everything.
Listening To The Space
If context is everything, Darren starts by listening to the space itself. “The physical environment tells its own story,” Darren says. “My role is to make sure the sound supports that narrative.”
At The Calile, that means understanding how structural materials shape sound. “I’m constantly balancing the raw architectural strength of the space—the concrete, the breeze blocks, the brass— with music that feels human, emotive, and refined.”
The precision of the hotel’s sound system allows for that kind of nuance. “It’s the best I’ve heard in any hotel,” he says. “It lets me be subtle, knowing every detail will land exactly as it should.”
That attention to detail and care for the stories behind the sounds, is what shaped Long Playing: a nod to experiencing music the way vinyl (or LPs) are intended; with your full attention, start to finish.
Long Playing: A Return to Presence
At its heart, Long Playing is about connecting with the music. It’s an invitation to listen differently.
In the Library, you can choose a feature record, settle into an armchair, and experience an album as it was meant to be heard: uninterrupted, unhurried, and accompanied by the soft crackle of needle on groove.
“When you put on a record, you’re slowing down,” Darren says. “You’re making time to connect, not just with the music, but with yourself. In that way, vinyl becomes more than a format. It becomes a philosophy.”
LP Sets
Each Thursday evening, Long Playing takes up residence in the Lobby Bar. As the sun dips behind the palms, Darren hosts a rotating cast of Brisbane DJs and selectors from 5pm.
“Brisbane has so much to offer when it comes to music and the arts,” Darren says. “With this vinyl-only night, we’re creating a space where DJs can share records from their personal collections.”
The result is part listening session, part conversation. “People often come up and say, ‘I’ve still got that record at home,’ or ‘My parents used to play this when I was a kid,’” Darren says. “In that instant, it’s more than a song. It’s a conversation. Those moments, unexpected and unhurried, are what Long Playing is built on.
“We live in a world that’s fast, convenient, and increasingly disconnected,” he observes. “Cash is just numbers on a screen. Food can be ordered without speaking to a soul. In a digital world, music is easy to rush past, skipped, shuffled, and forgotten. But putting on a record slows everything down, inviting you to truly listen.”
Vinyl offers something different. There’s a grounding quality to holding a record, reading the sleeve, dropping the needle, and listening, really listening. For Darren, that ritual is the essence of Long Playing: music that draws you into the moment, until you forget there’s anywhere else to be.
Long Playing editions are available to stream on Spotify or heard throughout The Calile and James Street precinct. The hotel’s record library is open to guests. LP sets take place Thursday evenings at Lobby Bar.
