How many years have you worked here, Owen?
OL: I've worked here since 1988. I came here as a builder, originally. I sort of stayed on developing the site for about three years. The original studio manager moved on to WOMAD and other things.
Why didn't Peter just build a studio in London?
OL: Well, he rented an old barn about six miles away where he produced So with Daniel Lanois. He had an SSL in there and Kevin Killen engineering. Dave Bottrill was the assistant. Then this site on the edge of Box village came up and it all kind of grew organically. The whole project sort of snowballed into a commercial studio. The first studio that opened was the one upstairs. Originally, the idea was that Peter would have the studio upstairs and the Big Room would be let commercially. The Big Room was designed very much for performance with the artist, producer, engineer all together in the same room.
So there are no physical divisions between the musicians and producers.
OL: That's basically how the room works, although there are of course acoustic screens that can be maneuvered to create degrees of separation. Slightly perversely, the desk faces the windows and looks out across the pond. Local architects were employed and worked to a brief that required natural materials to be used wherever possible. The resulting design has a fairly timeless feel.
It used to be a mill?
OL: It was a mill up until the late '50s. Then it was bought by a company that turned all the buildings into office space. Turning these offices into the studios was a major building project.
Who records here now?
OL: There has been a resurgence of guitar bands again, which is very good for the studios. You know, [the studio] is what it is, and the concept of that started back when Led Zeppelin had their little cottage in Wales. It's like here, but on a large and rambling site. It's like a little community. All Peter's companies work on the same site; we've got the record company and WOMAD as well as our own design and website teams.
It seems to be finely integrated.
OL: Yes. There's about 85 people working here, of which maybe 20 to 25 are employed by the studios, which is the most visible bit because we've got all the buildings. But you have all this other stuff going on as well. It's slightly different to that sort of isolated cottage in the country, but at the same time it still is a residential studio. Since it's more than 120 miles from London, it's quite difficult to get film work, because they don't want to move outside Soho. But this area has quite a vibrant music scene and many producers have moved down here from the big city.
Can you tell me about the 'recording weeks'?
OL: The last one was 1995. They're very expensive to run. You end up with stacks of material, shelves of tape, all of which needs to be sorted out.
It must be exciting to live through that, though. Conceptually, it seems quite amazing.
OL: They were very hard work but really good fun. In fact, for the Real World Records one, we had 11 rooms running at once. We even used an underground quarry up the road — Tchad Blake, with his binaural set-up, said, "Will you take me out to the mines?" [laughing]
How hands-on was Peter in all of that?
OL: Very.
He attended all the sessions?
OL: Of course. I think the first two, there was a lot more material because it was much more ad hoc. We've done others. We did a Sony writing week two years ago. They were very disciplined about it. They had three studios running and they were meeting every morning to plan the day.
Very structured.
OL: That was very structured. We did one for Polygram France; they sent 20 people over — writers and musicians. We used all the rooms.
How many studios are there now?
OL: We have four main ones, and Peter has two. He has the Writing Room and the Work Room upstairs. Then there's the Big Room and the Production Room, which we rent out commercially. So there are two commercial ones all the time. Then occasionally we let Peter's room out, if there's a call for it. So getting the mixing projects is fine with local producers and engineers, but it's much harder to get those down to the residential studio, because they'd rather do it in London where you can get rid of the band or go home at the end of the day. What we kind of live on, really, is the album projects, end-to end type projects. There's certainly a big change with recording budgets becoming ever smaller. We've got to adapt to that. Not really sure which way is forward.
A lot of people are trying to figure that out, as you are.
OL: Although I think it's easier to diversify in London. We're kind of sitting on the fence a bit.
Marco, How did you come to Real World?
MM: Oh, it's a long-winded story. I came to England in '95. I used to be a live sound engineer and I worked quite a bit in classical theatre, and with PA companies. Working as a sound engineer in Italy is very hard. Sometimes people are not professional enough and there's a lot of malicious competition. So I left, and when I started here, I couldn't speak any English so I had to learn it, go to school. I was 25. I then went on studying music technology. While I was doing college, I managed to get a work placement down here. I could not believe my luck. I just loved it. I came here once, then a second time. Owen picked me up from the bus station and said, "We've got a session. We've got Trevor Horn [Tape Op #89] coming down to do three days with Peter with some archive Genesis material. We need an assistant. Would you want to do it?" I was totally freaked out. I had never done a professional session, certainly not at that level. I was spending hours reading manuals. I didn't get any preparation for it. I was just thrown in. So it was hard work. I was working with one of the guys that followed Trevor everywhere — they must have thought I was dumb.
So when these guys said something needed to be done, you had to be on it.
MM: Yeah. I knew very little, even less about the specific setup in Peter's room. Luckily, the job wasn't too difficult, because they were just doing vocal overdubs with Peter on existing material.
On the one hand, it was probably really stressful but probably so exciting.
MM: At the time I thought, "I'm not any good at this. I can't do it." But then they called me again for a recording week in the summer. They needed some extra people, so they employed me for a few weeks. At the time, I was in my second year of college. And it wasn't long after that one of the assistants left. So I just got a call. They said, "Do you want to work here?" and I said, "I'm on my way." And then my diploma came through the post.
Is this structure actually submerged?
MM: Well, the floor of this room is a few inches under the pond level. Peter wanted as much light and water as possible. The natural daylight helps when people are working for a long time.
What are these ducts made out of?
MM: Clay. The studio uses natural materials, because they blend in with the original mill structure.
What do you use all this space in the rear for?
MM: One of the things we started doing recently in here is live takes, whole band to audience. We did one with The Incredible String Band. They sold tickets to their fan club, and the band performed in the studio to an audience of around 100 people.
There's not many control rooms you could do that in.
MM: Probably none. It was fantastic. You'd have the engineer sitting here, we had a guy explaining the process because, you know, they were starting and stopping for the various takes. They audience watched about six hours of it, right in the same room. Peter did it too, but it was more like a gig. This room sounds really good. It's good for playing and recording, as well as being an excellent mix room. Tchad Blake [Tape Op #16 & #133] uses it all the time when he's here. Peter's Up record was mixed on this SSL. The Big Room might look big, but its sound is really quite controlled and diffused at the same time. It feels very natural.
How involved is Peter now in the operations?
MM: He's very involved — he works here all the time.
He creates here constantly?
MM: Yeah. This is his base. He'll come in most days to the studio and he's got his offices here. He runs everything out of here.
How proficient is he on the board? Does he ever run his own sessions?
MM: He's quite hands-on, but in practice Richard Chappell is his engineer. He's been here longer than I have. He started as an assistant at the time when the Big Room was being built, back in 1988 or so.
Can anyone record here?
MM: Anyone can record here. The facilities that are available to clients can be regularly booked like any other commercial studio. We get quite a variety of projects.
Do you record drums in here?
MM: We have a choice of rooms to do drums in. This room [the wooden room] is the largest live room we have, and it has a very characteristic sound. There are another three smaller rooms, which sound quite different and can be used as an alternative. There's another studio through here, the Prod Room. It's amazing, because it's all visually connected as well. This was a stone drum room, which was connected to the wooden room, which was connected to the big room. When the decision was made to put this studio on as well, we kept having big problems with one kit in here, and another in there. So we then floated a room. The old room was beautiful. It was bare stone walls and squares of slate hanging from the ceiling. It was a very fine room, but it didn't work.
[We walk into production room.]
MM: This room here is where John [Leckie]'s [Tape Op #42] been working on the new New Order, mixing.
How would you describe your surroundings here?
MM: It's got some of the exclusive hotel elements, the comfort and the food, but it's also designed for making music. It's very laid back and accommodating. It's cozy but efficient, so it kind of works on multiple layers. High-tech, hand made — that was the brief that Peter had when it was built. I've been here eight years and I can tell you, this place works, it adapts to any kind of purpose, whether you are spending weeks tracking, a day remixing, even filming or doing live. A quantum leap from the confines of a basement studio most people are accustomed to.
What is the ideal project for you here?
MM: Ideally it's a band, but we can cater equally well for a solo artist and all [of] her/his session players or a mixing session with just two guys sitting in a room tweaking away. It can also be a writing session, where you start on a computer, a piano or a guitar and you later need to add more elements and perhaps more people. This is the small SSL room, we call it the Production Room. It's got a 56-channel desk, and comes with the usual selection of outboard. The room isn't really set up for surround, but we've recently had a look at the acoustics and changed it a little bit, also adding these Dynaudio M4 monitors. For near-fields I quite like these [KRK] 7000As, which are very hard to come by. If you see a pair, get it! I've spent five years trying to find a pair and I couldn't.
What makes them unique?
MM: I guess it's the early series. Older is better, isn't it? I think they had something in the balance of the crossover that they lost in later series. These early ones are sweet and they don't overkill. The cabinet's a little bit different. They claimed, on the newer ones, that they phase-aligned the drivers, but I think they screwed up. Something's not quite right. A friend of mine has a pair of 7000Bs and they don't sound as nice, but the drivers are exactly the same. So something must be different.
Can you take me through some of the key gear in this room? The SSL, and I see some 1176s?
MM: There is a selection of classic gear that everyone loves. This is an SSL 4000E converted to G. On the outboard front we have 1176s, Neve modules, the 33122s which are different from the others because they have the continuous gain; you don't have the line/mic differentiation. Some people just love running music through the transformers. They're also great for vocals, guitars, etc. These are quite special because they are actually BBC spec'ed. It's a custom mod that BBC asked Neve to perform. Here you have some digital delays, the AMS, all the good stuff. Eventide H3000 — still used by a lot of people. What we have found is that all this recent digital gear doesn't get used very much. People are still very attached to the old gear, probably because they spent years learning it. Like the H3000 — there's something nice about just going through the presets, because sometimes you're just looking for an idea.
I would imagine this Pultec EQ gets used a lot. How about the Focusrite stuff? I see their Platinum line in here.
MM: The Pultec certainly does get used a lot. On vocals, bass, sometimes guitar. Even set flat, just to warm things up a little. About the Platinum line, we've got a bit of a deal with Focusrite. We've written some reviews of their gear, so they've been kind enough to give us some gear in exchange. That is an OctoPre.
