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.

On The Record: The Madison Square Gardeners’ “Teeth of Champions”

LOWER MANHATTAN: While so many Brooklyn bands are trying to figure out new ways to distort, drown and fuzz out their sound in the studio, the Madison Square Gardeners are crafting hi-fi records in the spirit of their favorite 70s rock and roll albums by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, CSNY, David Bowie and T. Rex.

On their latest EP, Teeth of Champions, the Madison Square Gardeners achieve better-than-ever results on this mission. With Tomek Miernowski tracking the band at Grand Street Recording in Williamsburg, and mixing by Mario J. McNulty at his own Incognito Studio in Lower Manhattan, this band of well-oiled rock-n-rollers have made a record that stands up to their live show.

Accomplishing this has been a process, says bandleader and singer/songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan.

“What we do translates really well in our live gigs but recording has been a bit of an uphill battle for the band,” says Tasjan. “Because there was so much reverence built early on for the live shows – people were comparing it to The Replacements, the kind of music you have to see live because it’s so energetic and engaging. And we’ve struggled trying to capture that on record.”

Considering their instant chemistry on stage – doing classic rock-and-roll covers and eventually playing house band for a few select artists and venues around the city – the Gardeners naturally expected to breeze through their first studio sessions. They figured…pick a good room, a good engineer, and track four or five songs live. Don’t overthink it.

“We made our first EP at Headgear with Scott Norton, who’s a really great engineer that we knew through his work with Son Volt,” says Tasian. “We also really liked some of the records that have been made there – a couple in particular by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Hold Steady. We totally went in with the mindset of tracking live, but it was weird — even though we were all playing in the same room together, somehow it just didn’t have the spark of energy that we so easily have in our live show.”

It took an unusual recording assignment to set the band on the right track. “Engine Room Recordings asked us to do Poison’s ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ for their [upcoming] Guilt By Association compilation,” Tasian shares. “We spent the whole day just working on this one tune, and it became obvious to us that we were being too jock about the way we were going about making our own records – trying to go in the studio and track 5 songs all live and make it all about the vibe… We hadn’t been thinking enough about what we were trying to create sonically.

“What world did we want the band to sit in? Did we want to make super hi-fi big radio sounding records? Or did we want to be more ‘indie’ about it and make cool, garage rock sort of records? Each one is an art form. In working on that one song, and really pulling it apart, we realized we hadn’t been carefully considering the way in which we’re making our recordings. Once we got through that and turned it in (and Engine Room really liked it) then it was time to go back and reinvestigate.”

Refining The Process, Quarterly EPs, Big Sounds

That first Madison Square Gardeners EP, recorded at Headgear, came out in March of ’10. At that point they’d already been playing together for a few years, but had only just begun writing original material.

The band had always been a side project for Tasjan, who was lead guitarist in Semi-Precious Weapons, and his band-mates – all active sidemen for artists such as Ben Kweller, Justin Townes Earle, Roseanne Cash and Dar Williams. They all still play in multiple bands, but with no shortage of new material and enthusiasm for the project, they have been working through a series of Gardeners EPs and mini-tours over the last year.

“Instead of doing one record that would cost us a lot of money and time, our plan was to do a bunch of EPs over the course of a year or two,” Tasjan explains. “We figured we could put out another EP every 4 months or so – that way we always have fresh material, and we’ll always be able to tour and get press because we always have something new.”

Their experience producing the Guilt By Association cover led to a new approach on the Gardeners’ second EP, Taste the Thunder (January 2011). “This was our first attempt at working on each song until it was totally done, and I think it was definitely a marked improvement over the first EP,” Tasjan notes.

“And then in producing this new, third EP, we were refining that idea even more – [I think you always have] to make a record that’s even better, and that means across the board: that is, in the songwriting, the performances and sonically. So when we got to the point of mixing this one, I knew I wanted to get someone really serious. Mario had produced one of the Semi-Precious Weapons records, and I just knew he was going to have the right feel for this new record. It was like intuition.”

And, in recording, a process Tasjan refers to as “somewhat mysterious,” where one’s success is not always determined by practical know-how and flawless execution, intuition is often your guide. Especially when the project is not afforded tons of studio time in the great big room of its choice.

“If I could make one record like [Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’] Damn The Torpedoes, I think I wouldn’t care about anything anymore,” he shares, in a half-kidding tone. “In a way, it seems like that should be simple to do, but even when you know what you’re doing, and you’re in Avatar Studio A, the record you start out making is not necessarily the record you end up with.

“Hopefully, if you’re doing it right and open to people who can help you, you’ll end up with a record that’s even cooler than what you set out to make.”

The Gardeners were not going to get weeks in Avatar Studio A, but this did not change their objective just the process by which they would get there.

“We really wanted this record to sound as big and wide as the topics that we’re talking about in the music. Sonically, there’s obviously some 70s influence there…all our favorite records – Bowie and T. Rex, Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones. We really wanted to make songs that you’ll sing along to when you come to the show.

“So in the studio, we were focused on figuring out how to create that mood and that vibe, those big sounds and textures [without being in a huge room],’” Tasjan shares.

“There’s a lot of energy and passion that comes through on this record and part of it is that we really stepped up the material. But a lot of it was also that when we were tracking it, we really considered how we were recording each part. And then the mixing aspect – I knew that was going to be a big part of getting it to sound huge.

For this, McNulty’s part, the mission was clear: “The drums had to be big and powerful and the guitars had to sound thick. The vocal has to be thick and meaty sounding and the band is not the supporting cast – this is a real rock and roll sound, and I approached mixing it with that rock sensibility.”

In the sweet spot at Incognito Studio, where we previewed some final mixes, Teeth of Champions was sounding pretty epic indeed and refreshingly discernible to these ears.

McNulty mixes in Pro Tools on an HD3 rig through a Dangerous 2-Bus — a 16 channel analog summing mixer — with fader control via a Euphonix MC Mix control surface. Looking around his studio, he points out a few other important components: “the Pendulum ES-8 tube compressor is my main bus compressor, and I use a Dangerous Monitor, switching between the Focal‘s, NS-10′s and headphones.”

The care and consideration the band brought to the tracking sessions translated all the way through to the mixes, according to McNulty. “The playing was fantastic and everything was recorded really well by Tomek at Grand Street. He’d sent me some notes on what he did which was really helpful, so once I got started, I was able to approach it really organically. The songs really lend themselves to what they’re going for sonically.”

Check out our favorite track “Miracle Mile” off the new EP for a dose of the Madison Square Gardeners’ sweet Americana folk and rousing arena-sized rock-out jams all in one song!

And given the band’s ambitions, as summarized by Tasjan – “to make great records and go play gigs that people walk away from 100% satisfied” – you really ought to catch them live sometime.

Stream or buy the Teeth of Champions EP at the Madison Square Gardeners’ Bandcamp page. http://themadisonsquaregardeners.bandcamp.com. And follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Avatar Studios Hosts Paul Simon, Moby, O.A.R. and More

Paul Simon recently spent time recording at NYC’s Avatar Studios, working with producer Phil Ramone, engineer Andy Smith and assistant engineer Justin Gerrish.

Moby‘s also recently recorded in Studio A, with engineer Scott Norton and assistant engineer Rick Kwan.

Meanwhile, roots rock quintet O.A.R. recorded in Studio C with producer Matt Wallace and engineer Mike Landolt. Other acts that recorded in March include Teddy Thompson, Proud Simon, and The Script.

From the jazz world, the Christian McBride Big Band recorded in Studio A with engineer Joe Ferla, while woodwind specialist James Carter recorded in Studio B with producer Michael Cuscuna and engineer Jim Anderson, assisted by Fernando Lodeiro. Other notables were Michel Portal and The Don Friedman Trio, both of whom recorded in Studio C with their producer/engineer teams.

Studio A recently hosted several TV and theater projects as well. Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks recorded music for the upcoming HBO series Boardwalk Empire with producer Jim Dunbar and engineer Stewart Lerman. Also, the cast of Broadway’s Million Dollar Quartet recorded with producer Hank Neuberger and engineer Chris Steinmetz.

And finally, the music for Life Begins At 8:40, a 1934 Harold Arlen / Ira Gershwin / Yip Harburg musical revue, was recorded in Studio A with producer Tommy Krasker and engineer Bart Migal.

For more information on Avatar Studios, visit their website at avatarstudios.net.