Salon Kiku Outlasted Bangkok's Most Famous Molam Bar From One Floor Up

In February 2026, a shophouse on Sukhumvit Soi 51 went dark for good. Maft Sai locked the door on Studio Lam after twelve years. The bar's programming had spanned Thai molam, reggae, disco, jazz and experimental electronics. He put it simply: "the landscape has changed, and so have I." Salon Kiku kept pouring wine and running its rotary mixer exactly as it had since opening in July 2024, and in September it threw a three-night anniversary party with the same DJ who'd shut the building's ground floor earlier that year.

The Room Above the Wreckage

Salon Kiku is one room, roughly 60 people at capacity, built into the fourth floor of 3/1 Soi Sukhumvit 51, in the same building where Studio Lam ran its shopfront downstairs. It opened in July 2024, before anyone in Bangkok was talking about Studio Lam closing. Altec A7 speakers are mounted into the walls. There's a rotary mixer, turntables, CDJs, and a lighting rig built by local crew Human Spectrum that's meant to flex between a slow jazz-cafe glow early in the night and something closer to a club rig after midnight. The drinks list runs to wine, which tells you most of what you need to know about who this room is for.

Four friends built it: DJ Pam Anantr, filmmaker Natchanon Vana, and stylists Pornchanok Dibdee and Wipada Piriyapokai. The booking policy leans hard toward Thai and regional names first, with the occasional import. Onra, the French sample-digger, has played. So has Melbourne's Zjoso and Seoul's Justruud. So, repeatedly, has Maft Sai, who ran the shophouse underneath for over a decade before deciding he was done with it.

A DJ Who Learned to Dig in New York

Pam Anantr trained as an architect. She spent five years in New York, 2014 to 2019, and it's where the record collection started: she began digging for her father, a music fan, and Lonnie Liston Smith's Cosmic Echoes sent her down a hole of jazz-funk, fusion and spiritual jazz she never fully climbed out of. She went to 718 Sessions, Body & Soul, Joy, The Loft, Cedar Room, and caught live sets at Nublu, Headz and Pioneer Works. None of it was meant to turn into a career.

Back in Bangkok, a friend asked her to play her own vinyl at a riverside bar. On a good night it pulled 300 people. She now plays well outside Bangkok too, Wonderfruit, Zodiac Jakarta, and Tokyo's Circus club. Mixmag Asia named her an artist to watch for 2024.

The Floor Downstairs Keeps Showing Up

Salon Kiku marked its second anniversary over three nights in September: a Thursday "friends and family" potluck with Gres Teh and JWP, a Friday headlined by Maft Sai alongside Pam Anantr herself, and a Saturday closed out by Brent Burns and Seelie of the Transport collective, visuals running from local artist Pistolpraw. All three nights were free to walk into.

Booking Maft Sai for your own party, six months after he shut his, reads less like sentimentality and more like proof of what Loopliner found reporting on Studio Lam's closure: the crate-digging culture that venue represented never needed one fixed address to keep going, just somewhere willing to host it. Since July 2024, that's been upstairs in the same building.

If You Go

Salon Kiku is on the 4th floor of 3/1 Soi Sukhumvit 51, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana, open Tuesday through Saturday evenings. It's a small room, so turn up early on any night with a name attached. Most nights run free entry; anniversary and guest bookings are the exception worth watching for. It sits a short walk from Bangkok's wider listening bar scene, which is the honest way to think about Salon Kiku: not a replacement for what Studio Lam was, just proof the appetite for it didn't go anywhere.

Cover photo: Salon Kiku, by Rui Rodrigues.