Roots Manuva With Audient at Alaska Studios
A 36 channel Audient recording console was first choice for Alaska Studios when upgrading the facility recently. They wanted to keep their collection of classic outboard to use alongside the latest technology, which meant finding a desk that would work well in both the analogue and digital domains.
“We still use 2” and ½” mastering tape for the artists that love to keep it old school and get that warm sound of analogue tape,” explains owner Beverley Lodge. “Saying that, in this digital age, most of the recordings we do are to hard disc, using Logic Pro 7/8 and Motu interfaces. The Audient handles it all easily.”
Alaska Studios’ engineer, Bob Earland agrees. “The Audient has excellent routing, very useable mix buss compressor and nice clean, uncoloured signal path. Routing has sped up the mixing process especially for the laying down of stems.”
Bev Lodge tells us about upgrading the facility. “Alaska has such a great reputation, that when it came to refurbishing the recording studio it was important that we got it right. We were changing from a MCI JH600 which was very popular, so we needed a desk that would fit into the studio just as well. I got loads of advice from many great engineers and producers. Then we twiddled loads of knobs!
“I read lots of info about the Audient ASP8024 then contacted Garry Robson at Stirling Trading, who organised a hands-on demonstration for myself and Ben Castle, our head engineer at the time, at Deep Studios in Notting Hill. We were really impressed. But I thought that I should check out all the options and began a long search for the desk that would be perfect for Alaska. Like most shopping trips, it turned out to be the first one that we tried.”
A small and independent studio, Alaska was established originally in 1977 by Pat Collier of punk band ‘The Vibrators’. Despite changing hands a few times, the punk attitude of it being ‘all about the music’ has remained, allowing the passion for making music to shine through all their projects. Bev confirms this: “We work with a lot of new bands from all sorts of genres; Indi Rock, Hip Hop and Reggae and more recently contemporary classical. We also work with some great established artists. We have just finished recording Roots Manuva’s latest album, ‘Slime and Reason’ and it was great to be part of that. It’s a brilliant album!”
Bev is also amazed at the price of the desk. “It was great value, which means we can still do a professional job at a reasonable cost. Which is very good news for our clients. All in all, we are really happy with our choice of desk - it delivers!”
For further information on Alaska Studios, please visit http://www.myspace.com/alaskastudios
