‘End of the line’ — Wall of Sound music shop closing on Capitol Hill

(Image: West Edge Commercial Real Estate)

(Image: Lord Heathen/Google)

For nearly 40 years, Wall of Sound has offered a mix of new and used cassette, CD, and vinyl releases covering everything from avant-garde to art rock, Japanese noise to neo-classical, alternative to ambient, folk to free jazz, and so much more.

Unfortunately, the final track for this eclectic record shop, which has called Capitol Hill home for the past 23 years, will be playing out this summer above 12th and Pike.

“It has been a joy to disperse so much fantastic music into the world over so many years and into so many ears,” co-owners Michael Ohlenroth and Jeffrey Taylor announced in a message to Wall of Sound customers:

Sadly, we have reached the end of the line on a most amazing musical journey that we have shared with so many fellow passengers. Do not despair. The music won’t stop. It never will. Unfortunately, our time as a small retail shop will be coming to an end in coming weeks. We will provide you with more details in next Friday’s e-mail update. In the meantime, we encourage you to stop by the shop and pick up some new or old music and to offer us a little extra support as we begin preparations for our exit. We thank you immensely for your patronage and for keeping us a viable concern for the last 36 years.

CHS reached out to Ohlenroth and Taylor for more information about the decision and what comes next. We’ll update when learn more.

Mark Sullo and Eric Hoffman opened Wall of Sound in 1990 as a pop-up shop long before there were pop-up shops—it was a single wall of records inside Belltown’s Art in Form bookstore.

“There’s a lot of other references to the name in music history—in particular, Phil Spector made the ‘wall of sound’ approach to his recording methods that became sort of a famous term,” Sullo told Seattle University’s student newspaper in 2025. “A lot of people thought that’s where we took the name, but that actually was because of the physical limitations of the space within the store.”

Taylor began working part-time at Wall of Sound in 1991, according to City Arts, and Ohlenroth, who owned Ohm record store on E Olive Way during the 1990s, began working at Wall of Sound in 2001. The pair purchased Wall of Sound in 2002 and relocated to Capitol Hill in 2003, in a storefront located at 315 E Pine Street, near the late Bauhaus Books & Coffee. Ten years later, Wall of Sound moved to 1205 E Pike, at the corner of 12th Ave.

Capitol Hill has a rich history of neighborhood record shops. In 2023, CHS featured a series of oral history interviews with the owners of some of the neighborhood’s late/great record shops, including Bomb Shelter, Broadway Record Centre, Fallout Records & Skateboards, Mount Olympus Imports, Orpheum Records, The Record Library, and Rubato Records.

Recent years have seen other shops exit while a few spaces have held on.

Sonic Boom Records operated on 15th Ave E between 2002 and 2010, then relocated to Melrose Market for one year before leaving Capitol Hill. Spin Cycle on Broadway, Zion’s Gate Records on E Pike, and Selector Records on E Madison remain.

Sometimes the shutdowns are nearly song-worthy. Everyday Music closed in 2021 on 10th Ave. Today, it’s a Joybird furniture showroom from La-Z-Boy.

Wall of Sound’s 400-square-foot suite, meanwhile, is on the market for a new tenant, listed at $2,995 a month plus triple net maintenance, property insurance, and property tax — or, about 60 sealed first pressings of Fleetwood Mac – Rumours with intact hype stickers a year.

Wall of Sound is located at 1205 E Pike. Learn more at wosound.com.

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