THE ADVENTURE starts the moment you clamber into the water taxi at Heybridge Basin. If you’re recording at East Point Studios and you miss low tide, then this is the sort of journey you’re going to have to get used to. Best you don’t forget anything essential before the captain casts off… East Point is on an island,
you see. It’s the latest addition to Miloco Studio Group’s ever-expanding management roster, and it’s located in the Manor House on Osea Island in the River Blackwater estuary in Essex. Nigel Frieda, one-time owner
of London’s famous Matrix and Maison Rouge studios and brother of John the hairdresser,
bought the island over a decade ago from the Charrington brewery. Dig around on the internet, and you’ll soon discover Osea has a colourful and somewhat controversial history as a retreat and ‘celebrity sanctuary’. Wanting to distance himself from that episode, perhaps, Frieda set about re-marketing the island as a holiday resort in late 2010; and in 2011 he began a dialogue with Miloco regarding the fully- equipped SSL studio installed in Osea’s waterfront Manor House. “We know Nigel from his
time at Matrix,” says Miloco managing director Nick Young, who has been hosting PSNEurope on the island on a bright July day. “He loves music,
Entry to the SSL room is through a bookcase
and he wants to start exploiting this studio, which has just been sat here doing very little for most of the past 10 years. We thought we could help him
develop Osea’s reputation and bring some business here.” Which, of course, fits in
perfectly with what Miloco has been doing over the past few
Osea Island hides a fantastic secret – an SSL room accessed through a hidden door. But there’s so much more to Nigel Frieda’s private hideaway, says Dave Robinson
years: building up a portfolio of quirky, charismatic facilities in the UK and internationally to manage and promote. “We came up to the island and just thought it was terrific. Not just as a studio with a control room, etc – it’s about vibe and location and what you can achieve here.” “There’s something magical
and mystical about this place. And I’m not the sort of person who says, ‘Oh man, can you feel the vibe!’” laughs studio manager Siobhan Paine. But they are right. Osea consists of a hamlet of cottages and houses, a converted chapel, various outbuildings and barns and the aforementioned Manor House, set amid fields and
The Manor House
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