Karaoke Epoc

The best traditional Japanese-style karaoke venue in London, no contest. I visited for the first time alongside a friend with much excitement for its reopening—I had previously only known about EPOC during its time underneath the "DE-LUXE CLEANING" launderette and was greatly saddened by its closure... but what a joy that it's here again! Lovely staff, a cute little bar area, cosy (but tight!) and atmospheric booths/rooms, and of course a whole lot of JOYSOUND technology! Big thank you to Jack for making us feel at home and chatting with us about nerdy anime music 😄 FYI, the machine we were provided runs on "JOYSOUND MAX GO" so do check the online catalogue to see if your faves are included :)

I will premise this by saying I have previously worked at a karaoke shop in Osaka, so my experience comes from comparison, and may not reflect the view of people who have never tried karaoke before. Quite a disappointing experience overall. First impression was not great, I had to email twice to get a response to a change in booking from 2 people to 5 people. The food was decent, but overpriced for what it was. Drinks in particular were well overpriced for their quality. The lemon sour tasted neither of lemon nor sour, and it was £9.90… (2000円). The karaoke itself was disappointing. We had to install Japanese keyboard ourselves to type in Japanese. The wire connection to the TV disconnects when the tablet is slid 3cm across the table. The karaoke search system is appallingly buggy and slow, and seems to miss tonnes of karaoke classics, which were searched for in both Japanese and English. Things like Perfume “Chocolate Disco” and SNSD “Gee”- real staples among K-Pop/J-Pop fans. If they were on the system, typing their names in both English and Japanese didn’t bring up the results. Room quality is poor and very shabby- much better when the lights are off. No sound proofing so everything can be heard from outside the room. It should be noted that other rooms have different karaoke systems (albeit one was on a Wii U… so I’m not sure how good that will be considering the software limitations of that system). We had the iPad tablet system. Lastly, the service. Did not feel friendly from the start. From being directed quite bluntly to the back by staff upstairs in the bar, to the extremely direct reception staff. The staff on duty kindly helped us fix the TV disconnection issue, and promised us that “the time had been adjusted”. Lo and behold, later at 4pm when it was coming to the end of our original time there, our time had not been extended and we were told we had three minutes remaining. Staff were no where to be seen to say thank you, goodbye or sorry for the inconvenience when leaving. Ultimately, with this sort of experience, unless you get to use the Joysound MAX machine as standard in Japanese karaoke shops, it’s probably better to use the Sing feature on Apple Music at home and buy a Japanese takeaway to accompany it.

Was a really enjoyable night, the edamame was yummy, the staff there really made the experience. Jack the bartender was super friendly, accommodating & a nice vibe to be around. When we asked whether we could extend for 15mins until closing they agreed straight away. Will definitely be back 😊

Very friendly staff, food and drink required purchase but clearly stated so that’s fine. The rooms aren’t soundproof at all so the whole time I could hear some girls singing awful covers of Katseye songs…but it sort of added to the experience so it was okay. The room was also air conditioned! Which was good. My 1 star overall is because of the lack of BTS songs! Another reviewer left the same comment, and they replied saying that you can ask for a different machine with more BTS songs. I went and asked for that and they said that isn’t something they offer. I checked the machine they had and it had 6 BTS songs in total. 6 BTS songs across their huge discography - biggest kpop group (and boyband) in the world and only 6 songs. To top it off the songs were cheap, “inspired by” covers, so the backing track was wrong and the lyrics were out of time with the track. They use a system called Singa which is an app you can download - I appreciate it isn’t this places fault that the app has limited songs, but I think they shouldn’t brand themselves as a Kpop karaoke place to then offer only 6 songs from the group that made Kpop famous. I’d recommend everyone download the app on their phone and check the songs available before travelling there. If you want a place that has ALL the kpop songs, BTS, Skz, Twice, IU, BIGBANG then kpop playground is your best bet.

Jack and Yudai were absolutely wonderful and accommodating to me and my husband’s needs. They were so friendly that we felt like we had already been friends for a long time even though we just met! We also came here to play with their DartsLive 2 machine and had a blast! Great prices for drinks and having been to darts/karaoke places in Japan myself, the decor and vibes just brought me back there. Thanks Jack and Yudai! We’ll definitely be back the next time we’re in town.