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72 and Counting…


Tileyard Studios


“HILARIOUSLY I am an ex-creative,” laughs Nick Keynes, who runs Tileyard Studios, a creative hub in London’s Kings Cross. “I used to argue I was ahead of the curve because I had a totally minimalist setup, all in the box.” Opposed to its manager’s former modesty Tileyard Studios has a selection of 72 standard and large-sized studios, hosting the likes of Chase and Status/MTA Records, Gearbox Records, Mark Ronson, Spitfire Audio, and The Temper Trap. The story of Tileyard is fantastically brief. Off the back of being in late 90s band Ultra, Keynes set up a music production company called Goldust with band mates Michael Harwood and Jon O'Mahony (which still exists today albeit under in-house music company Tileyard Music). O’Mahony has since moved on from the business


32 April 2014


and is now the owner of LA Sound Studios in west London, but three years ago Keynes and Harwood relocated to Tileyard after starting a partnership with property developer Paul Kempe, with the idea to build


a creative community out of an unassuming brick business park. Tileyard started with 10


rooms and a one-page business plan, and bespoke offerings for clients became very much the blueprint of


Chase and Status’ MTA Records has made its home at Tileyard


Jake Young gets together with Nick Keynes and Chris Walls to take a look at the ever-growing Tileyard complex.


the complex. “It wasn’t a get- rich-quick scheme but it just about stacked up,” says Keynes, whose job it was to fill the empty space with companies and individuals. “To this day we’ve never yet built a space, whether it be an


Spitfire Audio founders Paul Thomson and Christian Henson have studios in the complex


office space or a studio space, speculatively.” Keynes used Studio People to design and build phase one, then brought in Chris Walls (then of Munro Acoustics) as design consultant for the next stage of development, which happened to be an entire floor for British electronic dance music twosome Basement Jaxx. Built by Davies Design & Construction, Walls has since carried out all of the design, acoustics, drawing, project management, and monitoring set-up for every studio at Tileyard and since leaving Munro Acoustics in late 2013, has continued to work with Keynes on studios at Tileyard under the Level Acoustic Design banner. “A lot of acousticians are almost a different species but Chris was like a normal human being,” says Keynes. “From Basement Jaxx onwards Chris


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