Now In NYC, KEXP Goes Live From The Cutting Room

September 30th, 2009 by Trenton

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EAST VILLAGE: The NYC indie music scene got a huge boost when Seattle’s KEXP DJ John Richards moved out here to broadcast part-time from Brooklyn’s Radio New York studios. His two shows – John In The Morning and To The Five Boroughs – feature in-studio interviews and performances with up-and-coming bands, recorded and mixed (and shot for webcast) at The Cutting Room Studios.

Autodrone at The Cutting Room. Photo by Maryanne Ventrice.

When Richards connected with David Crafa, owner of The Cutting Room, he found a kindred spirit. “I’ve been listening to KEXP online for years and have been a big fan,” says Crafa. “I was really excited when I found out John was going to be establishing an audience terrestrially here in NYC, because I’ve always been unimpressed by NYC radio programming. I wanted to get involved with KEXP, so I reached out.”

Richards saw that Crafa shared the KEXP vision. “We had the same goal — to build a community here in NYC,” Richards shares. “That’s what he wanted to do with The Cutting Room, and that’s what we’re all about at KEXP. The artists are a part of our community and we want to create the best environments for them, creatively. The Cutting Room totally goes above and beyond to do that for our artists.”

KEXP hosts a smart mix of bands for in-studios that keep listeners on their toes. From Phoenix to Phenomenal Handclap Band, …Trail of Dead to Electric Tickle Machine, you may be hearing a band without a single record release one week, and an artist you saw on SNL the next.

WHY NYC NEEDS KEXP

“NYC’s been lacking a KEXP-like station that champions up-and-coming bands,” says Richards. “Over the last five years, we’ve been coming out here to do remote broadcasts, and found that a lot of New Yorkers were actually discovering NYC bands listening to our show online. A lot of people out there don’t make it out to the smaller clubs to see bands, so KEXP has been the local music station for a lot of cities, including New York.”

In mid-September, SonicScoop sat in on Autodrone’s in-studio set at The Cutting Room. And, a true KEXP experience, it was our first time hearing the five-piece rock band from Brooklyn. After a short interview with Richards, Autodrone played a five-song set, a proper sampling of their dark and atmospheric style of noise-pop. Cutting Room engineer Anthony “Rocky” Gallo captured the performance on a Thursday, and mixed it for the following Monday broadcast of John in the Morning.

“At KEXP, there’s always been a conscious effort to cover new and up-and-coming bands, and in NYC, that’s never difficult to do,” says Richards. “There are always great bands coming out of NYC. We’ll have bands who haven’t even released music yet, which I think is important — that they get an opportunity to play in this studio setting.”

Having up-and-coming bands experience The Cutting Room is important to Crafa, too. He’s been producing records and running some form of a NYC recording studio since his dorm days at NYU. He opened The Cutting Room 15 years ago. In that time, the studio has survived radical changes in the record industry and now accommodates an increasingly artist-driven business, offering full-on recording and production and mastering services, and video production and web development for artists, labels, production companies, etc.

By donating studio time to KEXP, Crafa plays a much larger role in NYC music than just record producer or studio owner. “It feels really good to be ‘giving back’ by contributing to a community effort here in NYC,” says Crafa. “We really enjoy working with the KEXP artists, and offer them free mixing and mastering on one of their tracks, as part of the KEXP/Cutting Room experience. They’ve been thrilled to get a high-quality, mastered track out of it, in addition to the radio and online exposure, and video.”

VIDEO BUILDS THE RADIO STAR

Typically, KEXP shoots video of the in-studio sessions as well, which get posted on their own website and distributed via the featured bands. The Cutting Room works closely with KEXP’s videographer, Louis Sparre/Electric Tweed, in post-production. “These are HD videos with two or three camera angles,” says Crafa, “Lou edits them and we synchronize the audio and blast it out in like a couple hours. They really come out great.”

The Phenomenal Handclap Band – 15 to 20 (Live on KEXP) from KEXP RADIO on Vimeo.

As Richards assures, video will be a growing component of KEXP’s music coverage. “The video we produced at Bumbershoot and our SXSW sessions were incredible — we teamed with Microsoft Silverlight and shot PJ Harvey there with a five-camera HD shoot, live,” notes Richards. “Now, we’re doing a whole series at The Cutting Room, and our focus into the new year is going to be more and more video podcasting. We ultimately want to capture every one of these interviews and performances on video.”

Since working with KEXP, The Cutting Room’s also partnered with Sparre/Electric Tweed to provide its other studio clients with the super high-quality video content. “These videos come out so cool and the artists are really happy with them, and this got us thinking,” says Crafa, “Why don’t we offer this as a service? So, we got together with Lou, and we actually just finished a project with our first artist independently of KEXP, an artist called Mother Moon.”

Coming up for CMJ, KEXP will be going full-swing with live in-studio sessions with The Soft Black, Chief, The Blakes, and Alec Ounsworth, among others. All live from The Cutting Room. Check out the full schedule here!

“We’ll feature local bands during CMJ, bands who are here playing the festival, and we’ll usually mix in a few Seattle bands too,” says Richards. “These are bands we could host at an in-studio in Seattle, but there’s something about having them when they’re out in NYC playing. You capture something there that you might not capture in Seattle, a kind of cool vibe of them being out here.”

Tune in here, to SonicScoop, for regular video of KEXP in-studio sessions at The Cutting Room, starting with their CMJ coverage! And if you haven’t checked him out already, tune into 91.5 here in NYC to hear John in the Morning M-F from 9am-12pm, and To The Five Boroughs from 8-10 on Thursday nights. John in the Morning is also simulcast live in Seattle between 6am – 10am PST, and can be heard in any time zone on http://www.kexp.org.