Revolver Upstairs

Revolver Upstairs in Prahran, Melbourne, brings a 320-capacity Bandroom into a late-running club setting. Its distinguishing feature is a home inside the 1914 Colosseum Arcade, a Chapel Street building that has held retail, music and rehearsal uses before its present mix of dancefloors, a live room and creative spaces. For concertgoers, the draw is proximity: emerging bands, established artists and DJs play in a deliberately intimate room, with the club’s after-hours culture ready on the other side of the night.

A club built out of a gallery

The building’s earlier chapter matters because it explains the venue’s odd layering. The Colosseum Arcade opened in 1914; it later housed drapery retail, while reporting on the building records a parachute factory and bakeries among its former uses. In the 1990s, Revolver Music Gallery and Revolver Upstairs added music and rehearsal rooms to its evolving role.

Thai pop singer Tan Punturaumporn and venue manager Camillo Ippoliti opened Revolver to the public in 1997. DJ Phil Ransom played opening night. In 1999, the venue secured a 7am licence, and Ransom shifted his Saturday all-nighter there to begin The Late Show. The May 24, 2025, 25th-anniversary event placed its resident selectors across the Stage and Cage, marking a long-running weekly format built around house, garage and a steady after-hours pulse.

Two rooms, one long finish

Electronic music supplies the core: Revolver says its late DJ programme features Melbourne selectors alongside interstate and international touring artists, while the Bandroom actively accommodates bands, DJs and film premieres. The compact live room carries in-house PA, AV and DJ equipment maintained by permanent sound engineers. Club nights divide into the front-room Stage and back-room Cage; Beat describes the front as the faster room and the Cage as the steady long-haul space. Expect a physical, close-packed room and an evening that can turn into a club night.