How many years have you worked here, Owen?
OL: I've worked here since 1988. I came here as a builder, originally. I sort of stayed on developing the site for about three years. The original studio manager moved on to WOMAD and other things.
Why didn't Peter just build a studio in London?
OL: Well, he rented an old barn about six miles away where he produced So with Daniel Lanois. He had an SSL in there and Kevin Killen engineering. Dave Bottrill was the assistant. Then this site on the edge of Box village came up and it all kind of grew organically. The whole project sort of snowballed into a commercial studio. The first studio that opened was the one upstairs. Originally, the idea was that Peter would have the studio upstairs and the Big Room would be let commercially. The Big Room was designed very much for performance with the artist, producer, engineer all together in the same room.
So there are no physical divisions between the musicians and producers.
OL: That's basically how the room works, although there are of course acoustic screens that can be maneuvered to create degrees of separation. Slightly perversely, the desk faces the windows and looks out across the pond. Local architects were employed and worked to a brief that required natural materials to be used wherever possible. The resulting design has a fairly timeless feel.
It used to be a mill?
OL: It was a mill up until the late '50s. Then it was bought by a company that turned all the buildings into office space. Turning these offices into the studios was a major building project.
Who records here now?
OL: There has been a resurgence of guitar bands again, which is very good for the studios. You know, [the studio] is what it is, and the concept of that started back when Led Zeppelin had their little cottage in Wales. It's like here, but on a large and rambling site. It's like a little community. All Peter's companies work on the same site; we've got the record company and WOMAD as well as our own design and website teams.
It seems to be finely integrated.
OL: Yes. There's about 85 people working here, of which maybe 20 to 25 are employed by the studios, which is the most visible bit because we've got all the buildings. But you have all this other stuff going on as well. It's slightly different to that sort of isolated cottage in the country, but at the same time it still is a residential studio. Since it's more than 120 miles from London, it's quite difficult to get film work, because they don't want to move outside Soho. But this area has quite a vibrant music scene and many producers have moved down here from the big city.
Can you tell me about the 'recording weeks'?
OL: The last one was 1995. They're very expensive to run. You end up with stacks of material, shelves of tape, all of which needs to be sorted out.
It must be exciting to live through that, though. Conceptually, it seems quite amazing.
OL: They were very hard work but really good fun. In fact, for the Real World Records one, we had 11 rooms running at once. We even used an underground quarry up the road — Tchad Blake, with his binaural set-up, said, "Will you take me out to the mines?" [laughing]
How hands-on was Peter in all of that?
OL: Very.
He attended all the sessions?
OL: Of course. I think the first two, there was a lot more material because it was much more ad hoc. We've done others. We did a Sony writing week two years ago. They were very disciplined about it. They had three studios running and they were meeting every morning to plan the day.
Very structured.
OL: That was very structured. We did one for Polygram France; they sent 20 people over — writers and musicians. We used all the rooms.
How many studios are there now?
OL: We have four main ones, and Peter has two. He has the Writing Room and the Work Room upstairs. Then there's the Big Room and the Production Room, which we rent out commercially. So there are two commercial ones all the time. Then occasionally we let Peter's room out, if there's a call for it. So getting the mixing projects is fine with local producers and engineers, but it's much harder to get those down to the residential studio, because they'd rather do it in London where you can get rid of the band or go home at the end of the day. What we kind of live on, really, is the album projects, end-to end type projects. There's certainly a big change with recording budgets becoming ever smaller. We've got to adapt to that. Not really sure which way is forward.
A lot of people are trying to figure that out, as you are.
OL: Although I think it's easier to diversify in London. We're kind of sitting on the fence a bit.
Marco, How did you come to Real World?
