Session Buzz: The Year in NYC Recording

GREATER NYC AREA: There have certainly been some down years in recent recording biz history, but 2011 was not one of them.

By all accounts, this was a big year for recording in NYC: There were the major mainstream Made-in-NY albums, i.e. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way (Germano Studios), John Mayer’s upcoming release (Electric Lady), Beyonce 4 (MSR, Jungle City), Sting’s latest (Sear Sound) and Tony Bennett’s Duets II (Avatar). There were the critically-anticipated indie releases, i.e. Bjork (Sear Sound, Avatar, Atlantic Sound) and Beirut (Vacation Island) and of course a ton of indie activity emanating out of Brooklyn, as well as big moves in the way of new and newly renovated high-end facilities for record production.

Drink it all in with this “Best of 2011” session highlights and studio hits:

We’ll start uptown at StadiumRed in Harlem – home to a team of engineers and producers that includes David Frost, Just Blaze, Sid “Omen” Brown, Ariel Burojow, Tom Lazarus, Joe Pedulla, Andrew Wright and mastering engineer Ricardo Gutierrez.

StadiumRed hosted Chris Brown (Jive Records) for a stretch as he worked on his Grammy-nominated record, F.A.M.E. and a future album. The single “She Ain’t You” produced by Free School was recorded in Studio A at StadiumRed, and two additional songs off his upcoming album were produced by Just Blaze. Rick Ross also worked quite a bit with Just Blaze and StadiumRed this year – his albums Self Made Volume 1 and I Love My Bitches were both produced, mixed and mastered at Stadium Red with Just Blaze producing, Andrew Wright mixing, assisted by Keith Parry, and Ricardo Gutierrez mastering.

The track “Lord Knows” off Drake’s acclaimed new album, Take Care, was produced by this same StadiumRed team – Just Blaze, Wright and Gutierrez. The choir in this song was recorded in Studio A.

Other highlights include Ariel Borujow mixing three tracks for Chiddy Bang’s (EMI) debut album Breakfast, Joe Pedulla and Andrew Everding producing and engineering the new album by rock band La Dispute (click to read our feature about this album produced with no artificial reverb) and the Grammy-nominated Mackey: Lonely Motel – Music From Slide (David Frost, producer and Tom Lazarus, engineer); Far Away: Late Nights & Early Mornings by Marsha Ambrosius (Just Blaze, producer and Andrew R Wright, engineer); and J. Cole (Keith Parry, assistant engineer).

Rufus Wainwright (Universal Music Group) tracked portions of his new album “Out of the Game” in Studio ‘A’ (Neve 8038) at Sear Sound in Midtown, with Alan O’Connell engineering and Mark Ronson producing. Sear’s own Ted Tuthill assisted on these sessions.

“During his sessions at Sear, Rufus’ new opera Prima Donna premiered at the New York City Opera,” says Sear Sound manager Roberta Findlay. “They recorded using our Studer A827 2″ 24 track with BASF 911 2″, as well as Pro Tools. Tracking and overdubs varied from piano and vocal, whole band takes (piano, bass, drums, vocals), to piano overdubs, bass overdubs, keyboard overdubs, electric guitar overdubs, choir overdubs, drum machine overdubs, and many more. Mark Ronson brought in a wide variety of his personal vintage synths.”

Sear also hosted recording sessions for Bjork’s latest Biophilia, with Damian Taylor co-producing/engineering, and Sting tracking for his latest with engineer Donal Hodgson and co-producer/arranger Rob Mathes. And Iron & Wine tracked and mixed their song “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” which can be heard in Twilight: Breaking Dawn. Tom Schick engineered with Brian Deck producing. Rob Berger wrote the arrangements. [Click for a video of this session.]

In other highlights, Joss Stone tracked new material at Sear with an all-star band (Ernie Isley on guitar, James Alexander on bass, Latimore on piano and Raymond Angry on B3 and keyboards), and Steve Greenwell engineering and co-producing with S-Curve’s Steve Greenberg. “At Joss’ s request, we built a western version of a resplendent ashram for her, to stimulate her creative juices,” says Findlay. “I believe it worked!!”

Meanwhile, mixing sessions for Regina Spektor’s anticipated new album What We Saw From The Cheap Seats went down in Studio A at The Cutting Room – with producer Mike Elizondo, and engineer Adam Hawkins, assisted by Matt Craig. The album is due out in May 2012 on Warner Bros Records.

At nearby Germano Studios – where Joan Jett & The Blackhearts have been recording this month – it’s been a huge year of pop, rock, rap and R&B. In addition to Jett, who’s been in with longtime producer Kenny Laguna, and engineer Thom Panunzio, Germano’s hosted writing and recording sessions with Ne-Yo, OneRepublic and Alexander Dexter-Jones recording with engineer Kenta Yonesaka for his The Last Unicorn album, and mixing sessions with Sony Italy artist Fiorella Mannoia with Dave O’Donnell engineering.

Highlights from the year include the recording for Lady Gaga’s Grammy-nominated Born This Way, Adele’s Grammy-nominated 21, “Moves Like Jagger” by  Maroon 5 ft. Christina Aguilera, Beyonce’s 4, and the new will.i.am album…The studio also added new Exigy subs, and launched a joint-venture into Tampico Mexico, creating RG Germano Studios Tampico.

2011 has also been an epic year of releases out of The Lodge. Mastering Engineers Emily Lazar & Joe LaPorta mastered Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, which received six Grammy nominations including nominations for Lazar and LaPorta in “Album Of The Year” category. And the team mastered countless records released to critical acclaim, including Tuneyard’s Whokill, mastered by LaPorta, Liturgy’s Aesthethica, mastered by Heba Kadry, the Cults debut, mastered by Lazar and LaPorta, EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints, mastered by Sarah Register, and albums by Dum Dum Girls, Cold Cave and Hooray for Earth – all mastered by LaPorta.

As covered here on SonicScoop, LaPorta also mastered the huge Neutral Milk Hotel release, the band’s first (an all-vinyl complete box-set) since ’98′s classic In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Lazar and LaPorta also mastered Boy & Bear’s award-winning Moonfire, produced by Joe Chiccarelli.

For EastSide Sound and chief engineer Marc Urselli, it’s been a year of recording some of NYC’s finest avant-garde, jazz, fusion and acoustic music greats like John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Chihiro Yamanaka with Bernard Purdie, and more recently John Zorn, John Medeski and Mike Patton. Citizen Cope and Swiss crossover jazz band The Lucien Dubuis Trio have also been recording albums with Urselli at East Side Sound.

In the Fall, Broadway veteran singer Wren Marie Harrington teamed up with arranger/producer jazz wunderkind Art Bailey to record a collection of jazz and Latin infused American and world standards at EastSide with Lou Holtzman engineering and Eric Elterman assisting. Bailey, Dave Acker, Marty Confurius and Diego Lopez formed the band for this record.

Plenty of jazz, avant and orchestral sessions recorded at Avatar Studios this year, including Stanley Jordan, James Carter, Steve Reich / So Percussion, Joe Jackson with Elliot Scheiner, Esperanza Spalding with Q-Tip and Joe Ferla, Chick Corea, Zak Smith Band. One of the big, ongoing sessions of the year at Avatar was Tony Bennett’s Duets II album, produced by Phil Ramone and engineered by Dae Bennett. In March, Bennett and Sheryl Crow recorded “The Girl I Love” in Studio A.  In July, Bennett sang and recorded “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” with Aretha Franklin in Studio C, and at the end of July, he recorded “The Lady is a Tramp” with Lady Gaga in Studio A.

Other pop/rock artists recording at Avatar this year include Paul McCartney recording a Buddy Holly tribute, Ingrid Michaelson recording her upcoming album, Human Again – both with producer David Kahne and engineer Roy Hendrickson – Elvis Costello,  James McCartney, and VHS or Beta.

And Avatar’s Studio A and C were used on many a Broadway cast album, and TV and film score/soundtrack recording sessions, including: Boardwalk Empire featuring Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks with producer / engineer Stewart Lerman, and Mildred Pierce, also ft. Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, with producer Randy Poster; Louie, produced by Louie C.K. with engineer Robert Smith assisted by Bob Mallory; Glee, with producer Tommy Faragher and engineers Bryan Smith and Robert Smith; and the films  Moonrise Kingdom (the new Wes Anderson),  A Late Quartet, Friends with Kids, and So Undercover.

Across town, some of the biggest pop artists were working out of Stratosphere Sound in Chelsea, where songwriter Amanda Ghost and producer Dave McCracken were stationed much of the year working on new material with Florence and The Machine, Santigold, John Legend, the Scissor Sisters, The xx and Daniel Merriweather.

Ever the awesome rock recording studio, Stratosphere hosted several album projects this year including Canadian band Jets Overhead with producer/engineer Emery Dobyns, Japanese band The Telephones with Alex Newport, The Static Jacks with Chris Shaw, and Delta Spirit with Chris Coady. And, switching gears, both Sarah Brightman and Aaron Neville recorded at Stratosphere – both tracking vocals with Geoff Sanoff.

Finally, The Sheepdogs, a rock band from Saskatchewan, were paired with Stratosphere owner/producer Adam Schlesinger for Rolling Stone’s “Choose the Cover” contest. They worked on several songs with Adam…and they won!

BIG YEAR FOR BROOKLYN

In 2011, Manhattan saw the opening of Ann Mincieli’s impressive, golden-age-reviving Jungle City Studios, and major renovations and new rooms at the legendary Electric Lady Studios, but Brooklyn has been the real hotbed of new studio activity. Converse opened its Rubber Tracks Studio this year, and The End in Greenpoint recently opened the doors to its recording and live performance complex. And much building has been underway elsewhere…

2012 will see three new serious recording facilities open in Williamsburg – all three bigger/better versions of existing local indie favorites.

The Bunker, for one, has already held inaugural sessions at its impressive new two-room facility which features an exciting new Studio A with large live room with 25-ft ceilings and three isolated sections which can be closed off by sliding glass doors.

In one of the room’s first sessions, Bunker co-owner John Davis tracking the new record for funk band Lettuce (featuring Soulive members Eric Krasno and Neal Evans).  “I tracked all the basics live to 2″ ATR on my Studer A80, and we had drums, bass, 2 guitars, keys (B3 and clav) and one sax going down live,” Davis describes. “Additional horns were later overdubbed. It was a great, super funky party in there the whole time, with a bunch of friends hanging and generally great positive creative vibes going on.  We went for (and captured) a live, raw, authentic funk vibe.”

Meanwhile, across town on the Williamsburg/Greenpoint border, Joel Hamilton and Tony Maimone are preparing to open the new Studio G – this is one of the original recording studios in the ‘Burg now expanded into 5,000+ square feet. Studio G will house one of the city’s only commercially available Bosendorfer grand pianos (to our knowledge), and three full featured studios – a 48-input SSL 8048 “A” room, and an equally spacious Neve 5316-equipped “B” room – with ample tracking space and isolation…built by musicians for musicians. (Look out for our upcoming feature on Studio G!)

According to Hamilton, they’re booking the A room for January and beyond, but “things are already booked in super tight, so call now!”

Besides building an insane new studio, Hamilton’s been making records all year too. He worked with the electronic artist Pretty Lights tracking the band in a live-to-two-track analog scenario – all analog and vintage signal chains with no isolation. The band played live in the room together and the masters went straight to vinyl – only to ultimately be sampled by Pretty Lights (Derek Smith) for his album, I Know The Truth. It’s a production style the artist calls “analog electronica.”

Another engineer/producer with an ambitious new studio in the works for 2012 is Marc Alan Goodman who you may recognize from his “Building Strange Weather” blog here on SonicScoop. While work has been heavily underway at his studio’s new location on Graham Ave in Williamsburg, sessions have continued across the ‘hood at the existing Strange Weather Recording. Among the year’s highlights were Here We Go Magic recording overdubs for their upcoming album with producer/engineer Nigel Godrich who was over doing television sound for Radiohead.

The band Friends also recorded two singles and an upcoming full-length album at Strange Weather with co-producer/engineer Daniel Schlett. And the band Lakookala made an EP at the studio (“start-to-finish in 3 days”) with Goodman co-producing and engineering.

Over at Fluxivity, 2011 was the year that the studio’s recently-completed tracking room got a workout, with everything from full tracking with drums to guitar, vocals and all manner of overdubs. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion has been working at Fluxivity, with Spencer and engineer Brian Thorn mixing the new album. Ed Mcentee assisted.

Says Fluxivity owner Nat Priest: “This was primarily a tape-based project, mixed to the studio’s Ampex ATR 102 tape machine in the ½” stereo format. Jon Spencer and Brian Thorn used quite a few pieces of the studio’s vintage analog equalizers, compressors and delays including the 1/4″ slap machine and EMT plate reverb.”

Black Dice also made a new record in Williamsburg with Matt Boynton recording, mixing and producing at Vacation Island Recording. Free Blood (members of !!!) and Suckers also made new albums at Vacation Island with Boynton this year. And, Zach Cale is currently in the studio completing mixes for his latest EP, Hangman Letters.

A couple 2011 Vacation Island highlights were Beirut mixing their latest release The Rip Tide with engineer/producer Griffin Rodriguez, and the “Recorded for Japan” compilation which saw Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, Chairlift and R. Stevie Moore through the studio. Boynton recorded and mixed a lot of this record, and the rest was mixed by Jorge Elbrecht. Vacation Island engineer Rob Laakso mastered the album.

Over at The Brewery Recording, also in Williamsburg, members of breakthrough rap group Odd Future tracked vocals for three songs and started mixing for their new side project The Internet, due out in early 2012. Matt Martians and Syd tha Kyd produced and Andrew Krivonos engineered on these sessions.

The Brewery reports they had 700 sessions through their one-room facility in 2011, running round the clock. Another highlight is happening currently with WZRD, the rock duo formed by Kid Cudi and producer Dot Da Genius. Noah Goldstein has been engineering these sessions.

Brooklyn producer/engineer Allen Farmelo – who you may remember designed this awesome custom console with Greenpoint designer Francois Chambard for his own studio The Farm – just finished mixing a record with noise duo Talk Normal, a project by artist/engineers Sarah Register and Andrya Ambro, with producer Christina Files.

Farmelo also produced/engineered an album for Brooklyn-based children’s musician Elska, out of Mavericks Studio in China Town and back at The Farm, and mixed/mastered two new film scores by Cinematic Orchestra, produced by band-leader Jason Swinscoe for Ninja Tune Records. “These two scores were for films from the 1920s: the Dada-ist masterpiece Entr’acte and the early city portrait called Manhatta. Both were performed live to a packed house at London’s Barbican Center this year, a beautiful night of music and film.”

And, as covered this month in the New York Times, Farmelo produced and mixed a new album by 85-year-old jazz pianist Boyd Lee Dunlop which was tracked at Soundscape in Buffalo by Jimi Calabrese, mixed at The Farm and mastered at The Magic Shop by Jessica Thompson

“An old friend and photographer met Boyd in a state-funded nursing home in Buffalo and began recording him on his cellphone and sending me MP3s and asked if this was any good,” says Farmelo.

“I was blown away by what I heard and arranged to record Boyd with bassist Sabu Adeyola and drummer Virgil Day. Buffalo has few studios, but thankfully I found a room tucked away on Buffalo’s West Side with a Steinway and amazing vintage mics and pres (RCA 77s, Neumann U47s, Neves, etc). I put  up and tracked the session in one day and mixed on the API/Studer combo here at The Farm. I aimed for a vintage sound (late 50s Atlantic Studios in particular), and feel I got it (mono is a big part of that). Jessica Thompson just nailed the mastering perfectly.”

Next, to Greenpoint where Joe McGinty’s unique Carousel Recording – with its heavenly collection of vintage synths – recently hosted Finland electronic act Husky Rescue. Led by Marko Nyberg, the group booked a week at Carousel to lay the groundwork of their next record, utilizing many of the vintage synthesizers in the studio. “They were ace analog synth programmers,” says McGinty, of Psychedelic Furs, Losers Lounge fame. “It was great to see them in action, and I learned a few things as well!

Carousel has also opened a second room to accommodate that ever-expanding keyboard collection, which we featured earlier this year. Recent additions to the collection include a Moog 15 Modular, Freeman String Symphonizer, Yamaha YC-30 organ, and Yamaha CP-70 Electric Grand Piano.

In DUMBO, Joe Lambert Mastering had a record year. First off, Chief Engineer/Owner Joe Lambert was nominated for a Grammy in the “Best Engineered Album, Classical” category for the aforementioned Lonely Motel: Music From Slide by Steven Mackey and Rinde Eckert.

And other highlights include: mastering the major label debut by Fanfarlo (Atlantic Records/Canvasback), produced by Ben H. Allen, and recorded by David Wrench, the popular Washed Out (SubPop) album Within and Without, also produced by Allen, the Atlas Sound (4AD) record Parallax, produced by Bradford Cox and Nicolas Vernhes, and the Panda Bear (Paw Tracks) album, Tomboy, produced by Noah Lennox and Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember.

Over at The Fort, engineer/producer James Bentley has been working a bit with Brooklyn-based Goodnight Records, including tracking for the new KNTRLR LP, and recording/filming an in-studio performance with the venerable Brooklyn band The Big Sleep. “There were about 40 people and a keg, it was an amazing party,” says Bentley.

OUTSIDE THE CITY

Emerging Brooklyn band Thieving Irons trekked up to The Isokon in Woodstock to make a record with engineer/producer D. James Goodwin, Nate Martinez and Josh Kaufman co-producing. “Incredible songs, deconstructed, then put back together in a left brain way,” says Goodwin of the project. “Very few cymbals, tons of space. Lots of Kaoss Pad!” Stream a track “So Long” from the album.

Goodwin also made an album up at the Isokon with art-folk group Bobby – tracked and mixed the full LP for Partisan Records.

In Jersey City, Big Blue Meenie is still going strong, and hopping with sessions all year. Highlights include Rainey Qualley mixing her EP with Tim “Rumblefish” Gilles and Matt “Dasher” Messenger (the single “Peach In My Pocket” is featured in the 2011 Sundance-winning film To.Get.Her), and Alright Jr tracking their new EP Scratching At The Ceiling with Chris “Noz” Marinaccio, Colin “Gron” Mattos, Matthew “Debris” Menafro, and Jeff “9/11″Canas, and mixing with  Gilles and Messenger.

Also six-piece NJ prog-rock band The Tea Club mixed their “Live at Progday 2011″ show with Messenger, Marinaccio and Gilles, and – most recently – the jazz-fusion oriented Dennis Haklar Project tracked new material (9 songs in 2 days) with Marinaccio engineering, assisted by Colin “Gron” Mattos.

What a year, and those are just some of the highlights! We can only imagine what 2012 will bring to NYC in the way of new recordings — and we can’t wait to hear them.

 

Kanine Records To Release Zambri Debut EP “Glossolalia”

Sister synth-pop act Zambri have signed to Brooklyn-based Kanine Records, and will put out their debut EP, Glossolalia, this November.

Zambri’s unique avant-pop sound mixes experimental beats, moody synth soundscapes, and dueling female vocals with soaring melodies. Led by captivating sisters Jessica and Cristi Jo, with Will Spitz and Seth Kasper on live drums and keyboards, this band is something to see live. Keep up with them on Facebook.

According to Zambri’s announcement…

“Most of the sounds on the EP are homemade, many of which are built from vocals, which is perhaps what inspired the title. ‘Glossolalia’ refers to speaking in tongues; it is a mystical language. They met a like-minded friend in preeminent indie producer Chris Coady, who handpicked Zambri as one of his favorite upcoming New York bands.  While Coady scores production credits on “To Keep Back” and “News,” Noel Heroux  (Hooray For Earth) lends a hand with mixing “On Call” and “On Call (biddibiddi).”

Other tracks on the EP were mixed by Rick Kwan. Glossolalia was mastered at The Lodge.

Studio Tour: Recording Retreats

The bustle and heat of this city can spark new collaborations and ignites our creative fires. But with the sweltering summer months upon us, we sometimes find that the very elements that attract us to this teeming city begin to repel us away.

City bands retreating to the countryside to work through the creative process is nothing new. Artists from Led Zeppelin to Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver to this guy, have all generated some of their most recognized work while shacked up in makeshift cabin studios. But sometimes, an environment that offers a little more control and a proven track record is in order – especially when time and money are of the essence.

For instance, Sean Boyd’s Art Farm Recording reminds us of just how much space and peace remote studios can provide to artists willing to embark on a quick 2-hour drive.

Built in a remodeled century-old barn, Art Farm features 25-foot cathedral ceilings, a Toft console, Pro Tools HD system, and respectable mic locker.

With rates as low as $400/day, or $750/day including gourmet meals and lodging for the entire band, this massive music space proves just how far a few hard-earned city dollars can go.

Similarly, Woodstock/Saugerties NY’s Applehead Recording offers a scenic recording retreat on a working 17-acre farm, but ups the ante with a classic Neve console resurrected from NYC’s original Dangerous Music Studios, a staggering 30,000 cubic foot live room, and an ample collection of vintage mics.

Since 2001, Applehead owner Michael Birnbaum and crew have been playing host to a range of artists including Blondie, Lisa Loeb, Bad Brains, The B-52s and Lou Barlow.

Also no stranger to big names, Lou Gonzalez tried to get out of the studio business, but just couldn’t make it happen. Not long after selling his stake in NYC’s renowned Quad Recording Studios, Gonzalez built what was supposed to be a humble studio in his Greenwood Lake home – before it ended up taking over half the house.

The resulting studio, Quad Lakeside sleeps eight and includes a private guest house, SSL AWS900+ SE Analogue Console, vintage Steinway, Studer 827, Pro Tools HD system, and Gonzalez’s prized 1910 slate regulation billiards table.

Henry Hirsch is an engineer best known for 20 years of career-defining work with Lenny Kravitz.

Recently, Hirsch has moved his personal Waterfront Studios upriver from its original Hoboken location to settle in the emerging arts epicenter of Hudson, NY.

Built in an expansive 19^th century church, Hirsch’s new studio sports acoustically treated stretches within the main sanctuary, giving those spaces “a very focused sound while leaving the main room for the most beautiful orchestral sounds.”

This striking and rare room is completed by vintage Helios recording console and 3M 24-track tape machine.

If you have trouble deciding between booking recording time at a lakeside studio or in an enormous re-purposed church, Hopatcong NJ’s Barbershop Studio has you covered.

Merging two of the reoccurring themes that have cropped up in our recording retreats roundup, The Barbershop is built in an old church on the side of Lake Hopatcong known as (no joke) the River Styx. The enormous space houses a 72-channel SSL XL 9000K that feeds a Griffin Speaker system and 5.1 surround system, and the building comes equipped with its very own (still not kidding) 3-star Italian restaurant.

For those who want to get away but just can’t leave the trappings of the city behind, Sonalysts’ Power Station New England has erected a nail-for-nail recreation of what is now Avatar’s world-famous A-room.

Located on a multipurpose creative compound in Waterford, CT, this Power Station features a Neve VR, and can be booked at a fraction of the original’s cost.

Some of these remote studios have become famous in their own right. Over its 30 year history, Carriage House Studios of Stamford, CT has seen artists like Diana Ross, Pantera, The Pixies, Johnny Winter and Beyonce Knowles make use of their SSL 4048 and private sleeping quarters.

Notable current-day indie artists like Nicole Atkins, Ted Leo, Rachel Sage and Marissa Nadler, have also gravitated to this residential studio that sits just an hour’s train ride from Manhattan.

In 2008, drummers Jerry Marotta and Pete Caigan teamed up with original owner Joel Bluestein to revive the once-active Dreamland Recording Studio. Before its reopening, Dreamland was the site where over 350 records were recorded, including the B-52’s Love Shack, and releases by 10,000 Maniacs, Suzanne Vega, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, and Yo Yo Ma.

Already busy next-gen engineers like Chris Coady and John O’Mahoney and indie darlings like Beach House, Fleet Foxes and The Panics have begun to take advantage of the startling acoustics of this revamped 19^th century church in West Hurley, CT.

Also noteworthy is Rhinebeck’s Clubhouse, a high-end residential studio owned by engineer/producer Paul Antonell (Natalie Merchant, Rusted Root),

This complex is built around a 19^th Century barn, that offers four queen-size beds and a private lounge located just 5 minutes from the local Amtrak station.

Outfitted with a classic Neve 8058 console, Studer tape machines, Pro Tools HD system and an enviable collection of outboard gear and microphones, this studio combines convenience and well-measured refinement in an earthy, bucolic setting.

On the other end of the spectrum, landlocked fans of T-Pain and The Lonely Island will be happy to know that they can now make a record “on a motherf*ing boat.”

Steve Young of Media Recording Studios has finally decided to pair his twin loves of sound and water to create a something significantly more badass than sonar ever was. Ladies and gentlemen: Yacht Recording.

Although it may not prove to be quite as cost-affective as making a record on dry land, there’s something to be said for the unique ambience and sheer ballsiness of finishing your next album on open water.

Three private staterooms provide accommodations for 6 guests, while an HD-based recording system helps you capture the sounds and mood of the sea in a way that would make Hemingway and Melville look like sissies.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based producer/engineer who works with uncommon artists, and a journalist who writes about music and how we make it. Visit him at www.justincolletti.com.

Studio Tour: North Brooklyn, Part 2

NORTH BROOKLYN: Our neighborhood studio tour continues with four more decidedly uncommon studios in North Brooklyn. We talked to the owners of Strange Weather, Headgear, Metrosonic, and the Fort about sessions, toys, and building an active niche in this teeming slice of the city.

STRANGE WEATHER
South Williamsburg (Coming Soon: Williamsburg/Greenpoint)
www.strangeweatherbrooklyn.com

Room Rate: $450/day

Those familiar with the SonicScoop blog-roll may recognize the name of Marc Alan Goodman, who’s been recounting the saga of building Strange Weather’s new, full-service tracking studio on the Greenpoint/East Williamsburg border. In the meantime, it’s a small secret that his current location already hosts one of the most impressive collections of hand-picked ear candy in the city.

More than anything, this is a studio for artists and engineers with boutique tastes. No summary can do justice to the extensive selection of gear that includes names like Neve, API, Purple, Gates, Federal, ADL, Neumann, Coles, dbx, RCA, and Bricasti. Strange Weather is also home to a startling collection of guitars, drums, and keyboards at the ready for capturing any sound musicians can imagine.

Most surprising of all, according to Goodman, is the price, and the fact that all his vintage treasures are in prime working condition.

“I wanted to build a studio where people can walk in and use world-class gear at an affordable price in a functioning atmosphere,” Goodman says. “There’s nothing worse than booking a day at a studio where nothing works. I feel like that’s the rule rather than the exception in the commercial studios I’ve worked in.”

In the interest of full disclosure, this reporter has recently been in for some sessions at Strange Weather, and this kind of attention to detail has it fast-becoming one of my favorite places to work. Owning a studio has begun to turn Goodman into a capable tech in his own right:  his racks are over-stuffed with impeccably maintained vintage gear, and  handmade re-creations of studio classics like the LA2A, LA3A and 1176.

Built around a new 32-channel API 1608 console brimming with the choicest EQs, Strange Weather turns out to be an ideal room for overdubs, mixing, or any sessions that don’t require a cavernous live room.

When asked about his niche in the studio scene Goodman says: “Ideally everyone would complete their records from start to finish in a studio, but today it seems more common for musicians to combine studios with smaller at-home or portable rigs. We’re focused on making that process as seamless as possible; to give musicians and engineers used to working at home a place they can walk in and use great, often rare equipment in a functioning environment.”

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HEADGEAR RECORDING
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
www.headgearrecording.com

Rates: Click for Room + Engineer Rates
Room Rate: $600/day; $550/day for blocks of 3 days or more.

If there’s any truth behind the idea that Williamsburg is a great place to make music, a lot of responsibility for that would have to fall on studios like Headgear Recording. Since opening in 1998, Headgear has been the birthplace of seminal records from  TV On The Radio, Massive Attack, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Animal Collective, CocoRosie, Nada Surf, My  Morning Jacket, Son Volt, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Moby and Santigold.

Although the “Room For Rent” model of studio has waned as competent owner-operators create their own personal oases of sound in every corner of the city, Headgear remains one of the most accessible and freelance-engineer-friendly studios in New York.

In addition to house engineers Alex Lipsen, Scott Norton, and Dan Long, Headgear has been home to projects from a who’s who of hip and distinctive producers and engineers, including John Agnello, Peter Katis, Dave Sitek, John Hill, Chris Moore Gordon Raphael, TJ Doherty, and Chris Coady.

Headgear is also no stranger to Film and Television Post. Recent clients include “Grey’s Anatomy,” MTV’s “Skins,” “CSI: Miami” and the Columbia Pictures comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

According to studio manager Jackie Lin Werner, the studio’s appeal is personal as much as it is technical: “ We’re not stiff or pretentious. We’re down to earth and like to be helpful. Beyond the gear and the size of our rooms, I believe people trust Headgear as an established studio with a respectable client list.  Headgear probably appeals most to indie bands and major label bands looking for an affordable, high quality studio in a space that has a creative vibe. “

Headgear’s A-room houses an automated Trident 80C console and offers a choice of Pro Tools HD and 24-track 2-inch tape. A well-equipped B room is also available for mixing and overdubs.

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METROSONIC
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
www.metrosonic.net

Contact for rates.

Neve Console. Pro Tools HD. Ampex 2”. Engineers who know what they’re doing. What more could you need to know?

According to Metrosonic’s Pete Mignola, it’s the people who make a studio: “The people who built it, the people who run it, the people who use it,” he tells us.

“Everyone who comes to Metrosonic talks about the vibe. Of course they like the great gear, the affordable rates, the windows & city views, but they always say that they love the vibe here. There’s human element to this that makes each studio unique and special in its own way.”

Metrosonic has always had a large, comfortable control room. More recently, the studio’s originally modest live room underwent significant renovations in 2008, and now, Pete and the crew are excited to bring a new 850 square-foot live room into the fold.

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THE FORT
Bushwick, Brooklyn
www.thefortbrooklyn.com

Rates: $40/hr, including Jim Bentley as Engineer.

Over the past decade, North Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood has filled up with enough small private studios to fill an area twice its size. In that time, Jim Bentley’s studio The Fort has stood as one of the neighborhood’s active mainstays.

Persevering in this competitive new territory since 2003, owner/operator Bentley has hosted noteworthy clients including Brit Daniel of Spoon, Doug Gillard and Kevin March of Guided by Voices, James McNew of Yo La Tengo, Jennifer O’Connor, John Agnello and  Jemina Pearl.

This especially affordable studio is equipped for both analog and digital sessions, offering a Neotek Elan console, Tascam 1” 16-track, and a 24-channel MOTU/Apogee system. The studio bills at $30/hr on weekdays from noon to 6pm and at $40/hr 6pm-midnight or weekends, and includes Bentley’s services as engineer.

Bentley is most proud of his live room, a large, vibey space with vaulted, heavy-timber ceilings: “I love to track full bands in the room live for feel and then sauce it up and make it sound supernatural from there,” he says.

Bentley’s down-to-earth approach is made clear in his parting words to us. The Fort, he says, “appeals to the clients who realize making records is more about the man and the performance than the machine or the media buzz behind it.”

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based audio engineer and music producer who’s worked with Hotels, DeLeon, Soundpool, Team Genius and Monocle, as well as clients such as Nintendo, JDub, Blue Note Records, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visit him at www.justincolletti.com.

Label Life & Times: Dean Bein, True Panther Sounds

Fort Greene, Brooklyn: Like so many indie labels before it, True Panther Sounds began on a whim. Founder Dean Bein and his bandmates in a short-lived San Francisco punk band wanted to go on tour, so they pressed 500 copies of a 7”, booked a DIY tour and promptly sold out of the single.

Instead of pocketing the money, they reinvested it in a second release by their friends in the Brooklyn band Standing Nudes. And the label was born.

But True Panther only really took off once Bein moved to Brooklyn where he saw an opportunity to introduce Bay Area artists to the buzz-generating NYC indie music industry. Two years later, he was signing a deal with Matador, who acquired True Panther as an imprint in 2009.

Last year, True Panther released critically acclaimed albums and EPs by Delorean, Girls, Magic Kids, Glasser, Tanlines and Teengirl Fantasy. Growing with a diverse and uninhibited roster, True Panther is also becoming that elusive label-as-curator, a source of music discovery for fans.

If you want to know what it takes to build a successful indie label, read on, but here’s a clue: it takes heart. Bein is ambitious in the same way he describes the music he loves: that is, brave and adventurous, bright-eyed, exuberant. In many ways, he seems the embodiment of the label, or more to the point, of his audience — hard-core music fans looking for new, awesome sounds.

So True Panther started with releases by San Francisco artists. Tell us about the inspiration to do that once you’d relocated to NYC.

When I moved out here in ’07, I saw how quickly things happened in NYC with a new band. There is all this infrastructure here: it’s almost like if a band practices, they have a manager and a booking agent by the next day. In San Francisco, things don’t work that way. There’s really no industry. And people still hold onto the idea of legitimacy and cred and earning respect over time.

But I was really homesick for San Francisco and I thought it would be cool if someone here in NYC could champion the music I found exciting from the Bay Area. So I put out a single by Girls and then an album by Lemonade. And they both just took off to a level that I really didn’t expect at all.

Do you think that having that angle, or point of view, had anything to do with the label’s success?

I think there might be a certain small pond benefit. I think that can be an element in what can make someone succeed: being the defining voice of a community and either serving or representing that community to the outside world. Whether that be a set of people, or a place, or a type of production, a certain beat of dance music, etc. there’s so much music; people want help processing it.

And [at the same time] I feel like True Panther doesn’t have that angle anymore. At this point, the music comes from all over, and from every genre. Sometimes I wish it was a bit more focused. But there are common threads between what the bands are doing, even though maybe it’s not so explicit.

How did you open up to other acts, after those initial releases? Was there an idea, guiding principles of what you wanted to build True Panther into?

Well that’s the question I’m very much trying to answer in this new year. In the beginning it was very regional and based on personal relationships. And then last year we had this flood of releases — all of this exciting music. I felt really confident that these records were good and that people would like them, and to a certain extent it was about what I wanted to listen to.

But I can see the label growing now, and with that, I feel a much bigger responsibility to try to carry on this thread without any sort of markers. Somehow these disparate points on a map have to connect and you have to create new points and it has to make sense in this language that doesn’t even really exist.

Do you feel like you have a conscious idea of what you look for in an artist?

Yes, though it’s also somewhat vague, but I look for artists who are ambitious, and who are at least playing with, or challenging convention. And by ambitious, I mean brave and adventurous, playing with these formulas to try and make something that is, if not new, unique to the people making it.

I grew up listening to punk and hard-core and the reason I was drawn to that music was really much more about ambience, and the feeling it created. A hardcore record creates an environment. It wasn’t about hooks, or melodies that stick with you; it’s more about a feeling. And so honestly, I don’t think I have a very refined ear for songs necessarily. When I hear new things, I’m always drawn to that feeling it creates, the atmosphere, the story.

But this doesn’t preclude you discovering and being drawn to poppy music, like Magic Kids, that record is pretty classic pop.

Yeah, and actually Magic Kids is a good example: I remember going to see them two years ago and it was a real A&R fest and they finished playing and I talked to someone else who ran a label and I was like ‘god, that was great! I love these guys!’ and he was like ‘yeah, it’s pretty cool, but they don’t have any songs.’ And I really didn’t understand what that meant. I wasn’t really listening for the songs.

Well but other A&R or record labels may focus too much on the song, and miss out on an act that creates that amazing transporting effect that music can have. And I guess that’s one of the threads through your roster, is that they all evoke something.

Yeah. I hope so.

How involved are you with development of the artists you work with?

Very. I place a lot of importance on artist development. Things like the Glasser record and the Girls record – they are very opinionated, strong-willed artists. Magic Kids, too. There were lots of notes back and forth during mixing.

I think sometimes when people are recording, they get so deep into it, they can’t really hear it anymore. It’s helpful to get notes from someone who’s a fan, but who also spends 12-14 hours a day listening to music, and who hasn’t heard the material before. And it definitely varies the extent to which people are trying to take the notes.

There have been a few extended arguments over sequencing and stuff, but that’s the process: if on one hand I’m going to say these are releases that I personally really like, and that’s a thread tying True Panther together, then in turn I have a personal responsibility to the artist and the audience to voice my opinions. To an extent. Ultimately it’s the artists’ call. But it is a conversation and a process, and it’s a process that I enjoy.

Outside of the bands and you, and Matador, are there producers you consider part of the extended True Panther family?

Absolutely. Especially when you’re starting out, you rely heavily on favors. Chris Coady recorded and engineered the first Lemonade album for practically nothing. And actually the guys from Tanlines produced the Lemonade EP. There is a True Panther community and I feel like it’s expanding every day. Shane Stoneback (who engineered Magic Kids) was an incredible person to meet. He’s so talented and hard working. I feel really close to the people who are responsible for capturing those sounds.

And Chris Coady mixed the Delorean record, Subiza, which is awesome. I love that record.

Yeah, glad you like it! I met Delorean two summers ago when Girls and Lemonade played Primavera. We stayed at Ekhi [Lopetegi, of Delorean]’s house. We became friends and he started sending me tracks for this album. It was totally informal, completely friendly, just two music fans, and me giving my notes on it. And at one point, we realized they had an album. And it was really good! I asked if he wanted True Panther to put it out, and he said yes.

And I feel like I was allowed to participate in the creation of the record more so than if I’d actually been involved as the label, as “the man.” It was a nice process. Chris Coady and I would talk a lot, as they were mixing it over Skype. It really makes me feel like the label is accomplishing something worthwhile when you can draw a thread through these people and different musicians can find one another, forge friendships and collaborations, etc.

Like, Tanlines has a song with Glasser; Magic Kids and Delorean met and became friends and now they exchange home recording tips. And Chris very much feels like a part of that, and Jesse and Eric from Tanlines, and Shane Stoneback.

What other skills do you think you have that enable you to do this successfully, besides having that point of view of music fan?

You really do have to love the music, and you really have to trust yourself and be honest with yourself about the music. There has to be an ability to step outside of yourself and to know people, and be able to step away from something and see it for what it is, and what could possibly appeal or not appeal to people about it.

And just like any other field, a knowledge of the history, and the trends that come and go, helps a lot, because you start to see pretty significant patterns in the way that people embrace certain kinds of music. I spend a lot of time listening to older music, just filling up my memory banks with information.

On the business side, the most important thing — and this is something that applies to any small business — is scale and patience. I always thought if I scaled things properly, I could take a small amount of money and keep reinvesting it and with a little bit of luck, just keep it growing at a steady pace, but only if you approach each release with humility and patience. Allow people to come to the music. And try to be realistic about the number of people it can reach.

How do you make sure you’re out ahead of what’s going on just enough that you’re not following a trend, but contributing something new? What do you do to immerse yourself in the music being made right now and stay on top of all that?

Well I still listen to every single demo that I get, and I get recommendations. And I try to be pretty deliberate about it, starting with something that is really immediate and visceral: I like this. And if you have that response, then you have to step back and listen to it in a different context; listen to it on different headphones, listen to it in the car, in the subway, and then see it live.

See the audience: what does the audience look like? What context do you see them listening to it in? And what other artists is this like? If there are no other similar artists, what could it become? And what is happening in music? What are some new things that have happened recently, does this music reflect a movement in that direction?

What has been the record that has sold the most and what did that tell you?

It’s Girls. And actually what I took away from that experience was to really think about what gives music value. What makes people actually want to own music enough to pay for it? I have some criteria, four questions that I think address what value music can have for people:

1) Does it make you feel smart? Not is it smarter than you, but does it enrich you? Does it make you feel like you’re taking part in something that’s enlightened or intelligent?

2) Does it make you feel like you’re stepping into another world where maybe you haven’t been before? In Girls’ case, it’s San Francisco, which I’ve found is kind of a blank canvas for a lot of people. Do you feel like you’re stepping into this world?

3) Does it make you feel young? Does it make you feel nostalgic in its exuberance, (but not in its essence or aesthetic)? Is it ambitious and bright-eyed without being retro?

4) Do you feel an emotional connection?

Yeah, and #2 and #3 can often get you to #4. The feeling of being transported by music can be emotional. Thanks for sharing all that! SO what’s up next? Can you fill us in on any upcoming True Panther releases?

There’s this band from Portland called Unknown Mortal Orchestra. And it’s funny, the cycle couldn’t have been any shorter with him. He literally recorded a song in like 6 hours, put it on Bandcamp and 24 hours later it was on some blogs, and then 3 days later I emailed him.

So the song must have really done it for you…

But again, it wasn’t the song; it was the feeling! He’s writing these 60s style Northern soul and R&B but garagey songs with really intricate, awesome guitar lines, but he put it all over these really funky classic hip-hop breaks. I just liked the sound so much – I thought it was really cool that something could sound so old and yet completely new. He kept sending songs, and it turned from a 7” to a 12” (a 9-song EP). That will come out in March.

And you typically put out a smaller-run of vinyl first?

Yeah, I mean it’s not the law, but that’s the idea with the smaller releases – that it starts with something that feels precious and personal. It’s just 12” that feel good, that you can put up on your shelf and listen to.

There’s also going to be an EP by Zoo Kid, a 16-year-old kid from London who sounds like Billy Bragg. And we’re putting out a Fucked Up 12” that Shane Stoneback engineered. That’s part of their Zodiac series of EPs. There will also be a new Girls album in the Fall — they’re recording it now.

What else do you see going on out there that’s exciting right now?

This dude Robin Carolan does a label called Tri Angle. It’s often described as witch-house music — I see it more as bedroom producers playing with pop music, and hip-hop and rap in really subversive and experimental ways. He’s curated this selection of artists that do that in this post-Salem world. Check out Balam Acab.

Thanks Dean!

For more on True Panthers, and to check out some music, visit www.truepanther.com.

M. Ward, Moby, Smith Westerns & More Record/Mix at The Magic Shop

It’s been a minute since we checked in with The Magic Shop, one of NYC’s favorite, longest-standing recording studios. Here’s what’s been happening:

Legendary engineer Ken Thomas (David Bowie, Public Image Ltd., Sigur Ros) mixed Moby’s new, largely acoustic/orchestral album, with Ted Young assisting. (Click for some words from Thomas on the Moby record.)

M. Ward tracked material for his new record with Tom Schick engineering, assisted by Brian Thorn.

Smith Westerns were in with Chris Coady tracking and mixing their new record, Dye It Blonde for Fat Possum. The record was mastered by Joe LaPorta at The Lodge.

Earlier last year, producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Editors) brought The Kooks in to track at The Magic Shop.

Lenny Kravitz was in this past fall tracking for his upcoming album with engineer Tom “T-Bone” Edmonds, assisted by Ted Young.

Singer/songwriter Leslie Mendelson mixed her new record as Melody Kills at The Magic Shop with Steve McEwan producing and Kabir Hermon engineering.

Producer Jimi Zhivago and engineer Brian Thorn mixed Jenna Nicholls’ latest record.

Rock legends Alice Cooper and producer Bob Ezrin stopped by to track for a couple of days. Ted Young assisted on the session.

A few Grammy-nominated records were also recorded at The Magic Shop last year, including Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs and Norah Jones’ song “Chasing Pirates,” and the “Best Historical Album” nominated “Alan Lomax in Haiti” 10 CD box set was mastered in the Blue Room — an audio restoration, archiving and mastering suite — by Warren Russell Smith and Magic Shop owner Steve Rosenthal.

Also in the Blue Room, Russell-Smith continued audio restoration work for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, and mastered albums for Melody Kills, On The Brink Recordings, Oh Whitney, Glass Rifle and These People. He also worked on mastering Rockstar Games’ “Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmares Original Soundtrack,” and continued his work mastering and restoration of the 1973 Newport Jazz Festival.

In the “Red Room,” also dedicated to restoration and mastering, engineer Jessica Thompson mastered Ryat‘s Avant Gold, Jenna Nicholls‘ In The Blooming Hours, The Nowherenauts‘ Delightfully Distracted, produced by Kevin March, Mitten‘s debut EP, John Holk and the Sequins‘ If You See Her, and continued working on concerts from the Newport Jazz and Folk Festival archive.

Visit The Magic Shop at www.magicshopny.com.

The SonicScoop Year in Review: Top NYC Music Business News and Trends of 2010

THE FIVE BOROUGHS: 2010 has been busy all right. For anyone involved in New York City’s expansive business of music – producer, publisher, entrepreneur, engineer, artist, and many more – the environment remains fast-paced, ultra-competitive and constantly changing.

With 2011 looming, SonicScoop looked for the news, trends and topics that stood out to us over the past 365 days.

In audio post, it was grow or die in the uppermost echelon. The biggest facilities, including hsr|ny, Nutmeg, and Sound Lounge made serious expansions into audio and/or video:

Sound Lounge opened an ADR Stage and multiple studios.

Nutmeg Post added a strong team and facility when it soaked up Soundhound.

The big post house Mega Playground built out audio capabilities.

Northern Lights added a 5.1 audio mixing suite.

Video house Click3X reversed the trend and added their own audio suite.

Celebrating 35 years in business, hsr|ny continued to expand as a full-service video and audio post facility.

Large and mid-sized recording/tracking/mixing studios kept making capital improvements and expanding:

Premier Studios took over the 8th floor at 723 7th Avenue.

Engine Room opened up its penthouse studio.

Stadium Red expanded with a new studio for Just Blaze and a mastering suite.

Platinum Studios added Augspurgers to Studio K.

Sear Sound set up the Moog-centric Studio D.

Tainted Blue swapped out its SSL for a Euphonix (nee Avid) System 5.

And props to Electric Lady for marking its 40th Anniversary.

Converse (yes, the shoe company) has an interesting business plan for the Rubber Tracks studio it’s going to open in Williamsburg in 2011: no-cost recording.

Advanced smaller studios – independent and within larger facilities — and producer rooms also opened up at a peppy pace:

Chris Theberge’s Music Works arrived on the Upper West Side.

The former One Point Six in Williamsburg was reborn as Three Egg Studios.

Manhattan Center Studios launched The Fuse Box with Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgroove.

Avatar opened up its Studio W writing room.

Sisko’s Min-Max Studios opened up in midtown.

Marc Alan Goodman announced an ambitious new expansion for Brooklyn’s Strange Weather, then blogged about the buildout – step by step – for SonicScoop.

Guitarist Justin King moved his Vinegar Hill Sound from Portland, OR to DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Avid capped off a furious year of reinvention and new products with the release of Pro Tools 9.

Music houses and composers still had a ton of TV, film and video game work to go after and win:

Joel Beckerman of Man Made Music continued to make NYC a TV music powerhouse.

Composer Peter Nashel turned ears everywhere with his work for shows like Rubicon.

Outfits like Expansion Team scored for networks such as the Biography Channel.

Tom Salta understands how to get chosen to score for games like Prince of Persia and Red Steel 2.

Production music and synch licensing remained a solid business, especially for those who got in at the right time or had a smart approach.

NYC’s Kingsize Music was acquired by 615 Music.

And later on Warner-Chappell (NYC) bought up 615 Music.

NYC’s Videohelper released the “Scenarios” music search tool.

Jingle Punks continued to grow.

Mechanical licensing experts RightsFlow kept progressing.

One of NYC’s most controversial music business plays, peer-to-peer file sharing network Limewire, appeared to be finally finished.

Tracking, mixing and mastering at NYC’s established facilities did a relatively healthy volume of A-level and independent work throughout the year:

The Black Eyed Peas, Rivers Cuomo and Kanye West were at Germano Studios.

Neon Indian, Beach House, Matt and Kim, Bear Hands and more were mastered at The Lodge.

MSR Studios handled Kid Cudi, Evanescence and Broadway Cast recordings.

Lenny Kravitz, The Dirty Pearls, “Glee”, and Vampire Weekend were all at Avatar.

Joe Lambert Mastering worked with Moby and Ninjasonik.

New software and hardware happiness abounded:

We elected many items “Buzzworthy” at AES, from Universal Audio, Focal, SSL, Burl, Shadow Hills, Izotope, Sound Toys, Lavry Engineering, Telefunken and more.

Propellerhead released Reason 5.

NYC suffered losses when beloved people and places left us:

Recording icon Walter Sear passed away.

The great hip hop/jazz experimentalist Guru was gone before his time.

Clinton Recording Studios hosted its last session.

Brick and mortar music retail took another hit when Fat Beats shuttered its last stores.

Baseline Studios, home of Just Blaze and countless Jay-Z hits, closed.

Chung King Studios started off 2010 with a bang by suddenly vacating Varick Street.

NYC-based producers, mixers, engineers and artists became businesses in their own right:

Producer Chris Coady worked on some hugely acclaimed records this year, including Beach House Teen Dream and Delorean Subiza, as well as records with Hooray for Earth, Zola Jesus, Smith Westerns, Cold Cave.

People like Allen Farmelo developed their distinctive sound.

Choice songwriter Claude Kelly made a business of hits.

Shane Stoneback’s career took off via work with Sleigh Bells and Vampire Weekend.

Mixer Mark Saunders embraced multiple aspects of the biz from his studio at Beat 360.

Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess took his iPad/iPhone app MorphWiz all the way to #1.

Joel Hamilton continued down an immersive production path, working on records with Blakroc, Dub Trio, The Parkington Sisters and Blakroc.

And John Agnello brought his classic production and engineering technique to new records for Kurt Vile, J Mascis, Shayna Zaid And The Catch and Dead Confederate (among others).

The studio scene got a lot more socialicious and FUN:

Flux Studios was always hosting something in the East Village, like Alto and Dangerous converging for a schooling from Fab.

Digital Music NY was one of many popular business-based meetups.

Stadium Red partied down post-CMJ.

20dot20 mixed advertising and music.

And the Connectors connected a LOT of people.

What big stories would you include? And what do you see next in 2011? Don’t be shy – leave a comment and let us know!

– Janice Brown and David Weiss

LaPorta Mastering Neon Indian, Beach House, Matt and Kim & More At The Lodge

In addition to working with The Lodge founder and Chief Mastering Engineer Emily Lazar on recent projects such as Armin van Buuren‘s upcoming album, Mirage, mastering engineer Joe LaPorta has been rapidly expanding his solo discography with several significant new indie releases.

Hot on the heels of Bear In Heaven‘s Beast Rest Forth Mouth and Dum Dum Girls‘ I Will Be, LaPorta has recently mastered Neon Indian‘s re-release of Psychic Chasms, the accompanying remix album Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed, Beach House‘s “iTunes Sessions” EP, and Tamaryn‘s Mexican Summer debut, The Waves.

LaPorta has also recently completed hip hop legend KRS-One‘s Meta-Historical, produced by longtime Wu Tang affiliate True Master, Matt and Kim‘s new single “Cameras,” and Billboard Dance Chart-topper Sylvia Tosun‘s Above All EP, executive-produced and mixed by Tom Lord-Alge.

Upcoming releases LaPorta has recently mastered include Bear Hands debut full length on Cantora Records, mixed by James Brown, and Givers‘ debut full length album, mixed and produced by Chris Coady.

For more on The Lodge and LaPorta’s complete discography, visit www.thelodge.com.

We Are Scientists: Birthing “Barbara” At Mission Sound & Beyond

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: Barbara. What does this mystical word evoke in your imagination? For We Are Scientists, this isn’t just a likely moniker for the hairdresser down the block. No no: It’s the title of their infectiously delicious new album. It’s a woman you want to get to know.

This week marks the release of disc #4 from WAS, and it’s a musical milestone worth noting. The Brooklyn-based duo of Keith Murray and Chris Cain rock melodic all across the 10 songs here, energized by the punch of new drummer Andy Burrows and fully focused on a tighter sound.

Working with producer/engineer Ariel Rechtshaid, We Are Scientists hopped from NYC to LA to London to bring Barbara into the world, in all her glory. Once you dig into these hooks, we dare you to forget them. Wait! Make that a DOUBLE DOG DARE.

The new album sounds terrific. What was the recording philosophy
 going in?

Our starting point, before we even got going with any songwriting, was 
the desire to return to being a three-piece on stage. We spent the last 
album cycle (2008’s Brain Thrust Mastery) touring with a fourth man on keys and second guitar.

While it was a lot of fun, and the songs on that album — with all their four 
and five-piece arrangements — remain some of our favorites, two years of 
that left us yearning for the excitement and simplicity of the trio: 
three instruments, three voices, as much noise as possible.

So we wrote songs for three pieces, and when we went into the studio to record them,
 we wanted to make sure the end result sounded like just three people,
 that reproducing the songs live would be feasible for a three-piece.

That’s logical. How did that affect your choice of studios, which spanned NYC, London and L.A.? Where did you record in each city, and why?

I’d say our studio choice was a balance of financial responsibility,
 logistical requirements, and the knowledge that the record needed to
 sound decent or people would make fun of us.

We’re putting this album out on our own label, Masterswan Recordings, which despite an
 association with glamorous peregrinations and flagrant excess is actually just Keith and my laptops and bank accounts, so our sensitivity to recording costs was fairly high.

Luckily, these days, when you cut money from the studio budget, that tends to mean the lounge isn’t full of brand new furniture, or the TV in the lounge isn’t 3D, or one of the
 controllers for the XBOX is missing. Thanks to the state of technology, even very inexpensive studios have everything necessary to record top-notch sounds. 

The logistical concerns arose from our decision to record with a drummer who lives in London and a producer who lives in LA. So all of us did some traveling once or twice, and we ended up doing sessions in London, NYC, and LA (at Strongroom, Mission Studios, and Sunset Lodge, respectively).

It’s the global village! Tell us more about what led you to Mission Sound in Brooklyn. What made it the right place for you to work, and which songs from Barbara were recorded there?

We discovered Mission Studios because Arctic Monkeys used it for some of their last record, and we dropped by a few times to fray power cables, pour laxative into the coffee pot, and generally do whatever we could to slow that monolithic band’s steady ascension into the western musical canon.

While our focus was sabotage, we couldn’t help noticing the homey splendor of Mission Studios. When it came time to book something in New York, we were surprised and delighted to find that this place was within our budget. We ended up recording drums and bass for “Nice Guys,” “Foreign Kicks,” “You Should Learn,” and b-sides “Pound for Pound” and “Down the Hall,” all in a fairly intense two-day session engineered by local maestro Chris Coady.

Let us inside your Scientist™ brains: What are one or two new recording tips that you learned recording Barbara?
I learned that, at least with our recording approach, the actual bass guitar you’re using is much more important than amps, pedals, mics, etc., in getting a good bass sound.

In LA we had access to a rental place with an amazing range of instruments that they let us take back to the studio and pay for only if we ended up using them on the record. So 
I blew through about six classic basses before striking gold with a ’76 Gibson Ripper. We spent nearly a day fiddling with an old Ampeg set-up that belongs to our producer to get the sound that we used throughout the first guitar’s session. It sounded great, but it was no accident.

After that session, I spent a week hunting down a nearly-identical Ripper to eventually take on tour. And the nifty thing was that when we did the final drum work at Mission Studios, we went ahead and recorded scratch bass using my new Ripper through a D.I., and it sounded so good afterward that it went on the album.

For an example of the bass 
recorded through the arduously tweaked Ampeg, see “Rules Don’t Stop” or “Break It Up”; for the bass through a D.I., see “Foreign Kicks.”
 
Sorry, that was a long, nerdy story. I can’t even re-read it, and it’s my story.

Nah, we love nerdy gear stories! Moving on to the mix, who mixed the album and where? And what was different about having your new drummer, Andy Burrows’, drums in the mix? What other factors affected how “Barbara” was constructed differently?

The incomparable Dave Schiffman mixed the album at his home desk in Los Angeles. I never even saw the set-up. Dave would just send us test mixes to listen to and we’d email back comments. He was fast and effective as hell.

Andy’s the best combination of “expressive” and “tight” that I’ve ever seen in a rock drummer. I think from a production/mixing standpoint he’s kind of a dream to work with because when you record him, his instincts are so good.

It’s always worth pushing Andy for an extra fill idea because nearly every one he spits out is useable and awesome. His beats are very creative but in a way very conservative in that they always, always serve the song, not the drummer’s much-mythologized desire to lay down beats that grab your attention. So I think we and Ariel and Dave — producer and mixer respectively — had an unusually clean set of drum recordings, and also an unusually rich, coherent set of options, when putting together the final tracks.

Other than that, the big difference with Barbara was the staggered recording sessions. In the past we’ve always gone in for a couple weeks and banged out the album. This time we had several multi-week breaks, which could’ve hurt momentum, I guess, but instead gave us plenty of time to let ideas marinate and to make sure everything sounded the way we wanted it to.

There was an opportunity to live with choices for a while, and then to change them if we wanted to. In short, we were able to fix all of the problems that would otherwise have made it to press, resulting in an indisputably perfect record. Trust me!

The proof is in the listening: We can’t get “Jack and Ginger” out of our heads. Tell us 
something surprising about how this song was written or recorded.

I can tell you that the synth line in the verse, which is a pretty big hook, was kind of an afterthought — the song was written with no keyboards (actually, there was originally an organ filling out the mix, but no lead synths). We were working in Ariel’s guest house/studio after all of the recording was done, just getting rough mixes together, and he
 started fiddling with a lead synth line that immediately engaged all three of us.

We spent five or ten minutes honing the exact melody to where it is on the record, and suddenly realized with some horror that we had broken the Prime Directive for this record: we had added a fourth fucking instrument to a track. It really tortured us, actually, the decision of whether to leave that synth line on there or not. In the end we decided that the song would still sound good live without the synth – it would just be different.

And there’s no rule that says the live version has to accord perfectly with the record. Over the course of the few shows we’ve done thus far on Barbara, though, we’ve always had one idle friend or another come out and play that part whenever an idle friend was to be found.

Honing in on the homeland, what borough/neighborhood of NYC are you based out of? After having traveled the planet over, why do you still think NYC is the place to be?

I’d say we’re based out of Brooklyn. Since we moved here back in 2001,
 I’ve lived in Manhattan and Keith has lived in Brooklyn, but we’ve always practiced in Brooklyn, and that seems like the musical seat of the band. I guess?

Maybe we’re pan-New York. I suppose I wouldn’t call us an intrinsic part of “the Brooklyn scene” the way maybe a Dirty Projectors or a Grizzly Bear are. Let’s say we’re pan-New York with a Brooklyn bent.

New York City is the place to be because the number of top-notch restaurants is staggering; the people are (contrary to legend) very approachable; the people are serious about accomplishing their goals, and act like it; the people are fucking good looking; the city is fucking good looking; the city is easier and cheaper to navigate than any competing metropolis; and the city (in keeping with legend) has everything you could possibly want to watch, listen to, taste, interview, photograph, fuck, read, or record.  

— David Weiss

Chris Coady Talks Beach House, Destination Recording and Music Of The Digital Natives

LOWER EAST SIDE: We meet up with producer/engineer Chris Coady as he’s heading into the studio for the day. He’s mixing Abe Vigoda and it’s crunch time so we promise not to keep him too long…

Starting at Quad in the early aughts, Coady’s come up through tumultuous times in the music industry and kept incredibly busy the entire time. Teaming up with David Sitek to build Stay Gold Studios, where he engineered TV on the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs records, along with !!!, Cass McCombs, Blonde Redhead, Architecture in Helsinki, Coady’s been the trusted engineer to some of the most admired and sonically experimental artists in the Brooklyn indie-rock scene.

Since Stay Gold closed, he’s only built on that reputation, flourishing with adventurous electro-pop and rock artists like Lemonade, Telepathe, Islands, …Trail of Dead, ArpLine and Delorean.

Coady recently co-produced and engineered Beach House’s at-once intimate and majestic Teen Dream proving once again an indispensable production partner to the visionary artist.

Inside DNA Downtown — the bunker-like studio he shares with a producer-colleague — Coady points to racks of outboard gear once in the chain at Stay Gold and to the SSL G Series console formerly of Quad. The room is filled with equipment, the urgency of a deadline fast approaching and the promise of this young sonic mastermind. We get right to it…

So this is your studio. Tell me a bit about it. You share it with another engineer?

[Prior to opening DNA,] I had been working a lot at The Carriage House in Connecticut, which is really nice — they also have an SSL E/G series console. I’d been talking to a friend of mine about opening a Pro Tools room. He thought we should be more ambitious, combine our resources and open a [more serious] room. A lot of the outboard gear is mine, and was originally at Stay Gold. The console is his and we share the Pro Tools system and the speakers.

And you can do projects start-to-finish here?

Sure. And I have recorded projects here top-to-bottom, which — even though the space is small — have come out sounding great. I generally don’t use a lot of room reverb. For the most part, the sounds I record are usually pretty tight, so having a small studio is fine for me. I close-mic my sounds and then I create most of the ambiances artificially. So, a lot of times the drum sounds I get will be the same whether I record them here or in a nice big studio.

But with the Beach House record, now that’s a big sounding record…

Yes, and that record, by contrast, is filled with lots of room reverb. When we first got to the studio [Dreamland Recording, near Woodstock], I put up these two Earthworks mics, way on the other side of the church from where the band was set up to play. I’d set out to design the ultimate setup of all their organs and keyboards in the studio — they’d brought their own piano in addition to all these thrift-store 70s organs. I wanted to create this awesome environment for them to play in that would be visually stunning and inspiring.
Within a few days, everything got moved around and it became a free-for-all but the one thing that stayed were these two Earthworks mics setup far away from everything, on stands really high up in the air — left and right, pointing down at them. And these Earthworks mics and the studio’s API mixing board had a really cool marriage.

So you ended up using those room mics throughout the record?

Yeah, they were used quite a bit, especially on guitars. The record opens up with that sound — Alex’s guitar and Roland Jazz Chorus Amp pointed in the direction of those mics.
Also, we didn’t realize this until later on, but it turns out that outside of the church, right above where those room mics were set up, there was a bird’s nest. So when we went to mix, we found all these baby birds all over the album. And it was impossible to get rid of all the chirping! You can’t exactly hear it all over the record, but it’s definitely there!

Sweet! Was that a problem at all? Or just kind of amazing?

We were psyched! But it was totally consistent through the whole thing. I think at one point we tried to bring it into focus but it wasn’t quite loud enough…

Did you mix the record there? Or here?

Two of the songs were mixed here. We went through the mixing very fast at Dreamland, which made me nervous because I wasn’t used to the monitoring environment. The band wanted me to do it intuitively. And that did work, for the most part. But we did end up remixing two of the songs here, and I’m glad we did because those two songs have a slightly different feeling. The mix for “Norway,” for example, sounds more deliberate, less spontaneous.

Do you end up doing most of your work here at DNA?

I prefer to work here, but I end up traveling a lot. The bands I’m working with seem to not want to record in New York City so much. They want to go out to the country because it adds to the story — they find it inspiring and like the idea of living there during the recording. They don’t want to be getting texts about some party going on down the street.
And I appreciate that — going out to the middle of nowhere and shutting off your cell phone and not having Internet. But, I do this all year long. So it starts to get a little crazy when I haven’t checked my Internet in three days because that’s my only connection to normal life! Three isolated sessions in a row and that’s half my year that I’ve been sort of off the grid.

But has that approach helped get better results? When you and the band encamp somewhere, away from all the distractions?

If the band wants no distractions, that’s what we’re going to do. Because if the band’s not getting what they want, you’re going to hear that on the album.
Beach House is a band that knew what they wanted: they wanted to go out to the middle of nowhere and record, they wanted to record on tape and they wanted a co-producer, not a producer, because they wanted to be hands-on on the production side. They came with the most complete set of demos that I’ve ever gotten. The album was completely mapped out, from the beginning. All we had to do was do a really good job recording it.
There are a lot of bands who don’t know what they want and they hire a producer to help them figure it out. This time, we did it totally based on what the artist wanted and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Awesome, it is an amazing record. And you also recently engineered on the Delorean record, Subiza. Did you just mix, or have any hand in the recording as well?

Delorean was an interesting project because they recorded it themselves and had me mix it, but they were in another country [Spain] in a different time zone. So we mixed it over podcast. So, the mixing board was going into the computer and being sent over NiceCast.

And this was happening in real time?

Yes, and so they would listen and give me direction. It was an insane amount of tracks. One song had nearly 300 voices in Pro Tools. They’d say “Can you turn up that shaker?” and you’d go in and there’d be 20 shakers! And so…it was daunting.

Seems like that process would take a lot longer – did it?

It took a really long time and we did it over a long period of time — a week here, a week there. I’d love to work with them again, but I think I’d prefer to work with them in person.

Do you see any trends in music that you find inspiring from an engineering/production perspective, i.e. artists taking a more experimental approach to music?

Well, there’s definitely that. And also, I think there’s a new wave that’s happening right now, of young artists who are making music I find really imaginative.
But one thing I’m not really into is the way that Internet culture has influenced music culture. People are always thinking about how they’re going to be perceived on the Internet. And I really find that tragic. That music blog culture has such an impact on a band’s success to the point where with younger bands who’ve never consciously lived in a world without the Internet, I sometimes feel when I’m watching them perform that they’re performing thinking of the Internet, the bloggers. What are they going to say?

Do you think that’s affecting what kind of music is being made? Like a band going for a noisier, more distorted sound because they think bloggers will favor that?

Well I’m really lucky to work with bands like Beach House who don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks about their music. And I think that’s great. But then there’s the other half of bands that may have just come off a terrible tour and they’re in the studio thinking: if we don’t get a good blog acceptance, then we may as well not make music anymore. And I guess those people shouldn’t be making music in the first place. But in the 90s, it definitely didn’t seem like critical acceptance was nearly as much of a factor for bands.
But back to what I’m psyched about: I feel like there is a new wave of kids who are around 20 years old, making music that’s so wildly imaginative. I’ll hear some of these bands and just think ‘wow, that is a wild, forward-thinking sound.’ And then you find out they’re only 20.

Can you mention any artist in particular?

Yeah, lately I’ve been listening to Zola Jesus. And I read an interview with her, where she was citing her influences and she mentioned Morton Subotnick. And you wonder, how did she even come across Morton Subotnick? And I guess that’s definitely one of the positive effects of the Internet on music! I remember when I was younger, going to the library to research music. And now, these kids have grown up having access to absolutely everything.

For more on Chris Coady, visit http://justmanaging.com/producers/chris-coady/ and get in touch through his manager, Dan Backhaus.

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