TO PARAPHRASE the old joke, what do you get if you have Basement Jaxx’s studio in one corner of your yard, Mark Ronson’s in another, Zane Lowe’s in another corner and Tinchy Stryder’s studio in another? That’s right: a bloody big yard. Tileyard mastermind
Nick Keynes says it was not meant to be like this. “We haven’t marketed what we do – the industry is hearing about it in a really cool way. There’s an underground buzz.” Mainly through word-of- mouth recommendations, Tileyard has become the umbrella brand for a sizeable music complex located immediately to the north of the extensive King’s Cross redevelopment zone. What began life as the ‘Amplifi’ project 18 months ago – a collection of a dozen or so production and writing rooms, with a café at their shared heart – has just kept growing and growing. “The more we build, the
more demand we’ve created,” remarks Keynes. There’s one more phase to
“press the button on”, and that Dru Masters in his Tileyard studio. The Apprentice composer asked Munro Acoustics for a brighter acoustic, which was supplied
will take the studio count to over 50 rooms by the projected completion date of late spring. “The last phase will be
‘arrive and drive’ – short-term let space, where people want a presence here but don’t want to commit too long term. We will kit them out with the various specs for multi-use – say, with a couple of nearfield monitors
and the interface connections – so guys can turn up with a laptop for a week or a month and use it for programming, writing, audio editing, voiceover or whatever,” explains Keynes. The Tileyard ‘campus’ is
actually a loop of 26 office buildings, all owned by property developer firm
City & Provincial. There are a variety of businesses operating from the site, but the Tileyard Studios ‘media hub’ has gobbled up more and more of the offices as space has become available. Keynes – a former bass guitarist with late ’90s pop act Ultra – co-founded music production company Goldust
A music and media hub near King’s Cross is discreetly growing in size and reputation, reports Dave Robinson
and relocated the business to one of the offices on the campus in 2010 as a result of a business relationship and friendship with the landlord. This then led to Keynes being invited to run the expanding Tileyard initiative. The facility began as two
floors of studios (designed by The Studio People) above the cafe. Phase Two was the creation of a permanent base for Basement Jaxx in another building, this time designed by Chris Walls of Munro Acoustics. Walls has been retained as consultant for the project ever since. Twenty more production
rooms for the likes of writer/producer Starsmith and film composer Christian Henson, and music editors Tony Lewis (Skyfall) and James Bellamy (Les Misérables) marked the completion of Phase Three last June. Phase Four, in another building, was the creation of an event space and offices for music management company JHO Management and music law firm Sound Advice, plus a workspace for DJ Zane