“I’ve found the community of recording people in Los Angeles is a lot kinder and nicer than anywhere else I’ve been. It’s like ‘survival of the nicest’. You’ve got to be cool because you’re going to need help from somebody at some point.
One of the real joys of being in the valley in LA is that the film or TV studios will build these insane recording studios and just tear them apart a few years later and the wiring and everything goes into these electronics graveyards. My place is wired with stuff I would never have been able to afford if I hadn’t pulled it off reels in some of those places. The power’s really good here and I live in a weird spot on a cul-de-sac where I don’t have neighbours behind me. It’s super-quiet so no-one cares if I’m doing guitars at three in the morning.
When you’re around other studios it’s like an arms-race, you’re like ‘they’ve got this console, or that cool tube compressor, man, if only I had one of those….’ It’s only recently I’ve thought ‘that’s all cool, but I like my spot’. Because you can’t throw a rock in the valley without hitting a Neve. The closest studio to mine is my next door neighbour’s!
New Monkey, Elliot Smith’s old place is round here, Sound City’s not that far and there are studios all down Ventura Boulevarde. It’s nuts.
People seem to gravitate towards my space because, although it’s not huge, everything is hooked up; a lot of gear, instruments, synths, they’re just out. There are submixers everywhere, headphones and monitors everywhere so you can just get in the room and jam and then it’s a seamless transition to start recording.”