Kemado's Brooklyn Studio Installs New API 1608 Console
When Kemado Records built-out its new Greenpoint headquarters a few years back, they constructed a beautiful 1,000 sq.ft. recording studio in the ground floor which has been hosting sessions for label and related acts ever since. As the label group has expanded with its Mexican Summer and Software Recording Company subsidiaries, the studio has been busy, and recently replaced the vintage Neve broadcast console in the larger of its two control rooms with a new 32-channel API 1608 console.
API 1608 console
Kemado co-founder Tom Clapp, himself a producer/engineer and musician, designed the studio and says the new API fit the “new but still classic” route they wanted to go with a new board – something that would not need the constant servicing required of an older console.
An announcement put out by API notes that Clapp and colleagues burned the midnight oil and installed the new console in just three days, and synched the 1608 into a fully-decked Pro Tools HD rig with 48in/48out, a Studer 827A tape machine, and a Studer A80 VU mix-down deck.
The studio has been designed and equipped to suit a number of different kinds of acts, from electronic to indie rock to metal, and the circuit of engineer/producers that come with them. The “modern gain structure” of the 1608 was reportedly an important factor for Clapp – to provide a straight-forward topology and signal flow for outside engineers.
(A couple other Brooklyn recording haunts have a 1608 as their main recording console as well – Marc Alan Goodman embraced the board early at his Strange Weather Recording, and recently expanded the console to 48-channels, and a 1608 is also the centerpiece at Converse’s Rubber Tracks Studio.)
Kemado’s roster includes a number of harder-edged rock if not metal bands like Wild Hunt, The Sword, Grails/Pharoah Overlord, Call of the Wild, Moab, and Saviours, while Mexican Summer has put out releases by Best Coast, Light Asylum, The Soft Pack, Airbird, and Vietnam. Software Recording Company – founded by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Dan Lopatin and Joel Ford – has put out a wave of critically acclaimed electronic records including Oneohtrix Point Never (Replica and Rifts), Autre Ne Veut’s Anxiety and Counting and the two Ford & Lopatin albums, Emergency Room and Channel Pressure.
Kemado’s HQ also has a store-front record shop – Co-Op 87 – just voted among New York Magazine‘s best of New York.
Check ’em out at http://www.kemado.com. And find out more about the studio via http://www.kemado.com/studio.