24 l December 2013
www.psneurope.com
studionews SOUNDBITES
Plusdrums, a new ‘remote drum session’ service, has been launched by Music Week’s Rob Baker and his father Nick, offering a new way to drop live acoustic drum tracks into any musical project. Users can upload their brief, alongside their music and let the dedicated team handle the rest. Rob says, “It’s common sense to see collaborations taking place between two parties from other sides of the globe and that’s where we see Plusdrums in the long term.”
www.plusdrums.com
Pro-audio specialist Synthax Audio UKhas announced that it will distribute Ferrofish products in the UK. The German-based company offers a range of digital to analogue converters with a number of features including routing, wordclock and synchronisation. The available units include the Ferrofish A16 MK-II and A16 AE as well as the B4000+, which is a standalone sound module that produces authentic organ sounds. All Ferrofish products are available through Synthax Audio UK authorised dealers.
www.synthax.co.uk
White Mark Ltd has won a major international concept design competition to reconstruct and modernise the recording studios and control rooms at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Poland. The university encouraged entries from acoustic and architectural companies from around the world. “Winning the competition was a great achievement and one we are very proud of, but the bigger challenge will come when we start designing for construction,” says Alan Cundell, director of White Mark.
www.whitemark.com
Audient recently reached a significant milestone by selling 500 ASP8024 consoles. The ASP8024 has been in production since the company was founded in 1997 by Gareth Davies and David Dearden. “Although the design has evolved over the years, the fact that sales of the ASP8024 and its variants continue to show year on year growth stands testament to just how right David Dearden and the Audient team got the original design,” says Davies.
www.audient.com
GERMANY
‘Experience Kramer’ as Metropolis ups the ante
A fascinating masterclass delivered by revered engineer Eddie Kramer provided the chance to get up close and personal with a clutch of Jimi Hendrix multi-tracks. David Daviesbattled through a little crosstown traffic (sorry) to be there
THE CREATION of a permanent screening room, The Bunker, and an eponymously- named record label confirm London studio group Metropolis’ intention to diversify six months after announcing a major restructuring effort and the arrival of three new investors. Another new string to its bow is a nascent events programme that, in late November, brought legendary producer/engineer Eddie Kramer to Studio A for a series of masterclass events promoted by The Guardian. Now a sprightly 71, Kramer’s
credentials are in no doubt and include numerous classic album list perennials, among them Traffic’s self-titled second album, The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet and Led Zeppelin II. But is for his association with Jimi Hendrix that he is most celebrated; not only did he record every album issued during the guitarist’s lifetime, he has also helmed many of the posthumous releases and continues to work on archival projects with trustees Experience Hendrix. Taking an illustrated sortie through his own life in music,
“We recorded quickly! There was none of this buggering about with Pro Tools for a year…” Eddie Kramer
Kramer began by tracing his transition from South African- born aspirant classical pianist to London-based aspirant engineer working on recordings as divergent as The Kinks’ You Really Got Me and Petula Clark’s Downtown. Talent and good fortune then placed him at Olympic Studios for the second half of the 1960s – an undisputed golden era both for Olympic and the London studio scene in general. Not surprisingly, Kramer’s
affection for this period is profound and enduring. By contemporary standards, the technology might have been fairly formative, but was consistently pushed to its limits (and beyond)
by creative ambition. Kramer chuckled as he recalled Hendrix’s enthusiastic reaction to his first encounter with stereo phasing (“I want that on everything!”) and the years of whirlwind sessions that frequently saw rock classics captured in a matter of hours; the boldly innovative Purple Haze, for example, was put to tape in just two four-hour sessions. “We recorded quicky!”
exclaimed Kramer, who certainly wasn’t averse to cutting a rug to various classics he’d engineered as they played back through Studio A’s PMC BB5
“Jimi was just so easy to work with because he knew what he wanted”: Kramer remembers Hendrix with obvious affection
speakers. “There was none of this buggering around with Pro Tools for a year…” The final main section of the
masterclass saw Kramer open up the multitracks to three Hendrix classics – Castles Made of Sand, Purple Haze and Axis: Bold as Love highlight Little Wing, the last-named a Kramer favourite and one of Hendrix’s purest examples of songcraft. Speaking to PSNEurope in
advance of the Kramer sessions, Metropolis marketing director Gerry Gallacher agrees that the masterclasses represent a further diversification for the Chiswick studio group. “It is a lot more consumer-facing than what we are known for, but we realised that we have all these connections and it really made sense to try and do something interesting with them,” he says. “So the idea with the masterclasses is to offer a peek behind the scenes for the real fans and a chance for them to hear about the studio techniques employed back in the day.” Not that Gallacher has a quota to fill, mind you. “We will run these sessions as and when we have a great name who is available to do this, and has done some public-facing stuff before. In that regard, Eddie was a great name with which to start.” The fact that Metropolis is now turning more keenly to the wider world will also help to underline a sense of resurgence since the dramatic events of mid-year [see Review of 2013, page 6, for more comment on this]. With a new screening room and record label ready to roll-out, and studio bookings at a generally healthy level, Gallacher confirms that the mood in the Metropolis camp is currently positive: “We’re already seeing the fruits of our refocusing efforts – particularly from US-based clients – so yes, we’re upbeat as we go into 2014.”
www.thisismetropolis.com
Second Kramer rolls back the years (and the faders) to revisit some classic Hendrix multitracks
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