In January we sadly announced that Miloco’s first ever studio, The Square in Hoxton, would be closing after thirty fantastic years. Last week the Miloco team dismantled and removed every instrument and piece of gear before walking out of those doors for the last time. It was strange seeing the space bare after so many years. But the spirit of Miloco, instilled by our late founder Henry Crallan, continues on in our many other Miloco studios.
Read more about The Square’s history here.
Our 1955 Steinway B has arrived in the UK, and what a sorry looking piano it is! It is well overdue for a bit (or a lot) of TLC. It’s now in the hands of our capable piano restorers who will start the process of rebuilding the piano and bringing it back to its former glory.
First of all the piano has to be stripped completely so that the case can be sent off to the polyester plant for a nice new coat. The metal frame, the soundboard, keyboard – basically everything has to be removed. The frame will be away for about six weeks before the process of rebuilding the insides can even begin.
In the meantime we can prepare the new soundboard and order all the new parts to bring it back to its once great self.
Stay tuned for the ‘after’ shot and click here to read Episode 1: The Quest For The Ultimate Piano
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Getting into the Olympic spirit early, Miloco this week has added its second Brazilian studio by way of Estúdio Eiffel! Okay so the Olympics had nothing to do with it, but we are thrilled to welcome the brand new studio to our roster, making it out second studio in São Paulo, alongside AudioArena.
Located in the greater São Paulo neighbourhood of Santo André, the building was purpose-built as a studio by owner and producer Marco Antonio Esteves with the aim of developing artist projects with the highest sound quality. With this in mind he enlisted the help of designer and architect Jorge Suwazono for the construction, and engineer Adalbert Baggio for the acoustic treatment.
Spread across two floors, the studio is made up of two recording rooms, which includes one very spacious tracking room, a control room and vocal booth. Upstairs is the ‘chill-out zone’ with the kitchen and break room for artists to relax and unwind between takes.
No compromises were made when it came to stocking the studio with top quality, state-of-the-art equipment. Explore the gull gear list here, which features brands such as Neumann, Telefunken, Barefoot, Yamaha, Manley, and Maselec and of course the studio’s centrepiece – a brand new SSL Duality Console.
An historic area of São Paulo, and only 40 minutes drive from the city centre, the studio’s surrounds include plenty of accommodation options and various activities nearby.
Nick Young – Managing Director, Miloco Studios.
March 2016
I am no expert on pianos. I fully admit it. I can play a few notes on one, and I can hear when one sounds nice but certainly not like some others can. We rely on experts and clients to tell us about the pianos in our studios, and each time they do we listen to their feedback to try and improve what we have. So begins the tale of the Livingston piano saga…
In around 2012 Miloco took over Livingston Studios. The place was rundown and most of the gear was broken and needed work doing to it. We decided the console was so badly maintained that we had to get rid of it straight away and brought in a new one, and slowly but surely we did what Miloco does – fix things and make them better.
Amongst all this equipment came a Yamaha C5 grand piano (below). To my ears it sounded okay and some clients seemed to love it, but a lot of the Jazz heads said it was not a great piano and it had tuning issues. We decided to live with it for a while and off we went running Livingston and doing session after session.
In early 2015 we were offered a Bosendorfer grand as someone was moving and could not fit it in their new house. We offered to house the Bosendorfer and decided to move the Yamaha. However the Bosendorfer we realised was a bit smaller than the Yamaha and probably not fit for the job. This was verified when we had a Jazz pianist in who tried both the Yamaha and the Bosendorfer and decided she was not keen on both of them!
So began our quest for the ultimate piano.
Livingston 1 is a great tracking studio with five separate live rooms all connected with line of vision sight. It should be a natural choice for Jazz bands, and in short we want to make it the number one studio in London for Jazz bands (and of course any other type of band). For this to happen though we knew there is one last piece to the jigsaw: a top quality recording Piano. The question was how to do it on a limited budget?
We put the word out that we were looking for a piano and due to financial constraints probably an old one that we could refurbish. One of our piano tuners found an old 1890s Steinway (pictured below) so off we went to inspect the piano with the Jazz pianist. The piano was in a state! Not setup at all, needed restringing but still, the pianist liked the feel of it. She did of course point out that she did not know how the piano would end up sounding, and if we bought it it was a gamble. Our tuner was confident that we could make the piano sound great so we decided to buy it and our tuner took it away to restring and make it sound amazing.
A lot of work went into the piano and three months later we rushed it into the studio to try to get it in for a session that wanted to take it for a spin. Our jazz pianist came back in and tried it…instantly she did not like it! It had a nice bottom and top end but the middle of the register was not singing at all. The piano also kept going out of tune. Our tuners revisited over the next three weeks time and time again. We must have retuned the piano about 30 times but it just wouldn’t settle. We know pianos take a while to settle after a restring, but this was not right. Some days the piano would be out of tune within an hour of the tuner leaving the building. Finally our tuner admitted defeat and worked out that the problem was the soundboard. It had failed. This was a disaster!
After much consulting he put us onto Paul Leverett form pianorestorations.com. He said he could change the soundboard but he would only do this if he could refurbish the whole piano, which was the only way he could guarantee it would sound great. After adding the cost of this to what we had already paid for it to be partly refurbished, we decided to let it go and our tuner (who was extremely helpful) took the piano off our hands and gave us our money back.
So, back to square one. We spoke to Paul more and decided that his restoration service sounded like the way to go. We headed up to Paul’s workshop to meet him and look at the work he does and were blown away. We entered what looked like a small factory and found what must have been 20 – 25 grand pianos in various states of repair. Paul took us around and talked about what he would do. The process basically involved replacing everything in the piano and setting it up from scratch. With this work done he assured us we would end up with an incredible sounding piano and that it would be every bit as a new piano coming out of the Steinway factory. Great! Now we just had to find a Steinway to restore…
In a matter of weeks Paul located one in the States, a 1955 Steinway B. Although it needed a lot of work doing to it the price was exceptional for a piano of this year. As we were going to be rebuilding the piano completely (except for the frame) it didn’t matter how it was inside. So we bought the piano and then waited patiently while lorries were sent to pick it up but turned away by floods (following the snow storms).
Finally we got word that the piano was crated up on a plane! We now start the rebuilding process which Paul will update us on, step by step.
In the meantime while we wait for the Steinway to be rebuilt we have had the Yamaha restrung. It’s now sounding great and holding its tuning well (but it’s no Steinway). Clients who have been using it have been loving it though – now the only thing to decide is whether there should be one or two grand pianos at Livingston!
Posted in Uncategorized |Last week Miloco added to our already impressive list of German partner studios with the beautiful Clouds Hill Recordings, which becomes our second Hamburg location alongside H.O.M.E. Studios.
Brought to us by owner Johann Scheerer, CHR is a residential recording studio located near the water in Hamburg’s Rothenburgsort neighbourhood. Described as the “Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of recording studios” it really lives up the claim, being home to the Neve Room with a NEVE 8068 MKII console, the API Room with an API 3232 console, two large live recording rooms, two booths and an additional production suite. Throughout the studio there is an impressive array of gear, instruments and backline available to fulfil every artist’s musical fantasy. It really is like being a kid in a candy store… or chocolate factory.
If the huge 600m2 studio wasn’t enough, one floor downstairs is the impeccably designed Artist Apartment. Looking like something straight from an interior design magazine, this gorgeous residential space comprises of six bedrooms that sleep twelve, two bathrooms, a large kitchen and living room, and a small library. An additional four single beds can be brought in for larger parties, and even then the space still does not feel crowded. The Artist Apartment has a unique view over Hamburg’s Elbe River, which can be seen from the huge windows that flood the apartment in natural light, giving a warm relaxed air to the place.
Being able to have 24/7 access to the studio is not the only bonus of staying in the apartment – the use of the apartment is inclusive with the cost of studio hire making it both comfortable and affordable.
With top line design, vast amounts of space and daylight, CHR is a musical Nirvana for artists to escape to and focus on recording their projects.
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In late 2015 Miloco partnered with Sentric Music for the ‘The Next Big Sync’ competition, which gave Sentric Music members the chance to win an incredible prize pack, which included a sync mentoring program, professional mastering, free distribution, Jukebox servicing, access to Sync Market and a free two day session in any Miloco studio of the artist’s choosing.
Sentric Music is a fantastic independent music publisher, a company that’s home to over 65,000 songwriters that range from those just starting out, to those at the hight of their careers. Their catalogue represents hundreds of thousands of songs worldwide on behalf of songwriters, music publishers and other catalogue owners. We’re big fans of what Sentric do and have partnered with them previously for similar competitions that aim to foster the incredible talent in their roster of songwriters.
This particular competition closed on New Year’s Eve 2015 and after much careful deliberation over the weeks that followed, it has now been announced that the lucky winner of the grand prize is Liverpool solo artist Luke Cusato!
The 21 year old singer started writing and making music five years ago following the tragic loss of his best friend to illness, pouring his grief into his stunning and heartfelt debut EP Blueskies Sunrise. Two years later in 2014 Luke returned with the single ‘Nothing To Lose’, a powerful piano-backed track that showcased the maturation of Luke’s voice and skills as a songwriter. The past 12 months has seen Luke kick it up a notch, releasing his second EP, Backbone, and three subsequent singles including ‘Bodies’. With its delicate guitar work and and emotionally charged vocal the song caught the attention of many new music blogs when it was released in November, and clearly struck a chord with our friends over at Sentric Music too.
With his prize Luke will be recording at our iconic Liverpool partner studio The Motor Museum, a studio he feels right at home in having recorded there before with Al Groves and James Mellor.
Check out the stunning cover of James Vincent McMorrow’s ‘Cavalier’ that Luke recorded when he was last in The Motor Museum.
Click here to discover more about The Motor Museum, and stay tuned for more on Luke’s recording experience or subscribe to his channels below to follow his journey.
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London duo Oh Wonder came in to visit us a short while ago and record the video for their stunning, slow burning ballad ‘All We Do’. Taken from their self-titled debut album released in September of 2015, the song is a standout on the record which they have been touring for the past few months with sold out shows across America, Australia, Europe and Asia.
The duo came in with their live band to record the clip, along with their signature giant ‘OW’ neon letters they take on tour. Oh Wonder are performing at this year’s Great Escape Festival in Brighton in May and Team Miloco will be there to check out what we’re sure will be a great show!
Watch ‘All We Do (Live At The Pool, London)’ here:
Posted in Uncategorized |We may be biased (we don’t think we are) but we have some pretty impressive partner studios located all around the world as part of our studio directory. Amongst our three Berlin based studios is Axel Reinemer’s Jazzanova Recording Studios, a beautiful contemporary studio located in the centre of Germany’s capital that is home to a beautiful control room, two ISO booths, two live rooms and a lovely array of vintage analogue and modern high-end gear.
Clearly we’re not the studio’s only admirers – this month PSN Europe selected Jazzanova as their studio profile for the February issue of the magazine. PSN travelled to Berlin to take a look around and have a chat with the man behind the console – a custom-made Neumann that is.
Read the full article here or in PSN Europe below, which starts on page 22.
Posted in European Recording Studios |HYMNS is the fifth studio album, and their first in four years, from Miloco alumni Bloc Party who have worked on past albums such as Intimacy and A Weekend In The City with us. This is the first album with the band’s revamped line up, featuring new bassist Justin Harris and drummer Louise Bartle who joined original members, guitarist Russell Lissack and frontman Kele Okereke.
The entire album was written in The Bridge with engineer Ben Jackson, who programmed, engineered and mixed all the demos and went on to engineer the final cut of the album closer, ‘Living Lux’.
“Kele, Russell and me spent about a year demo’ing and trying out different sounds,” Ben says. “We were mainly in The Bridge with a few times at Livingston 2 and The Bunker. We loved the vibe in The Bridge, we did Kele’s previous solo record there and it’s just so flexible to work in.”
During the writing stage, Ben used a combination of Logic and Pro Tools. For all of Kele’s vocals he used a valve Neumann U47 into the API 7600 channel strip. For the guitars Ben used Russell’s pedal board through the Neve 1073 channel strip into the Distressor.
Given Bloc Party was formed 17 years ago, it’s only natural that their sound has evolved and matured, particularly after going on hiatus four years ago, leaving the band’s future in doubt. Steering away from their familiar punk sound, this is the most electronic we’ve ever heard the band. The album opens with the comeback single ‘The Love Within’, it’s a fun pop track with distorted synths that could make you dizzy. But this doesn’t set the tone for the album, switching gears to a more mellow speed
Of the strong electronic sound of the album, Ben says, “everyone keeps saying they can’t hear the guitars, but that’s all there is. All those synth sounds are actually Russell’s guitar.”
With titles like ‘Only He Can Hear Me’ and ‘The Good News’ the track list reads like a gospel album, and deliberately so. Okereke has said that he is not religious, but increasingly spiritual and HYMNS is his exploration of all the things he holds sacred in his life. Musically he works this in with the use of gospel choirs, atmospheric synths and sighing chords that are soothing but not uninteresting.
HYMNS is out on iTunes or can be streamed here.
In 1984 Milo Music was founded in Hoxton Square. Its owner Henry Crallan bought the site in what was then a very deserted and dilapidated part of London and built the first Miloco recording studio. Originally a two studio complex simply called Milo, it was later renamed to The Square when Milo became Miloco. It was a tremendous little studio collaboration between Henry and John Deacon from Queen, whom he had been working with as tour manager. For many years (up until the year 2000) The Square was the heart of Miloco and where Miloco HQ was based.
The building was full of wonderfully interesting and cavalier people. Film producers, video companies, record companies and tour managers who came and went and told us of their crazy adventures travelling around the world. I started at Milo in about 1989 and for the next 10 years I had some of my happiest times there, The Square being at the heart of them.
When I began, Hoxton Square was like the land that time forgot – there was so little life. The area was inhabited by artists and mavericks and some of the most wonderful characters. The 333 Club (which was then the London Apprentice) on the corner was the largest gay pub in London. The restaurant now opposite the White Cube used to be the Bass Clef, an old jazz club which had a great little analogue studio called Wave on the ground floor that recorded the gigs. Next door to that was a timber yard, and that was it. No other pubs, bars or restaurants. On Saturday night there were only two pubs open nearby: The Barley Mow and The Bricklayers Arms. It was deserted on weekends and a far cry from the hordes you’d find there today. In fact it felt so removed from London that we found it very hard to convince clients to go there, for them it was like travelling to Blackheath and the parking was free. Oh how times have changed!
Gradually over the next few years the bars and restaurants began moving into Hoxton; The Bass Clef became the home of Acid Jazz and The Blue Note an innovative 90s club. We saw and felt the area changing, some may say for the better but at the time we thought it for the worse.
The popularity of Milo Studios also continued to grow. Artists such as Marc Almond and Siouxsie & the Banshees were there in the 80s. Luke Haines and The Auteurs were regulars, as were the M-People, Brand New Heavies, D-Influence, Robert Owens, Tamsin Archer, Bjork, Shane McGowan, Sinead O’Connor and many other great acts. In the 90s it became the spiritual home for Pussyfoot Records which used it as a base to record all of its output. Alison Goldfrapp was a frequent visitor there as was Jacknife Lee (who went on to produce Snow Patrol) and Stuart Price who in those days went by the name Jacques Lu Cont. Mike Spencer was the in-house engineer for many years in the 90s and these days is still producing number one acts year on year.
In 2000 VCL video, who resided in the building, bought it from Henry and his fellow shareholders. Henry used the money from the sale to purchase Orinoco, the complex on Leroy Street which is home to Miloco HQ, The Pool, The Bridge and The Red Room London. We kept The Square however, renting it off the new owners, and as they had been friends of ours for many years it was a great relationship. From 2000 to now we saw Hoxton grow out of control into what is now the party capital of London. The place became a venue for the city and Saturday night crowds, and certainly had a different feel. You’d get a headspin trying to keep up with the restaurants and bars sprouting like weeds. Money poured into the area spurred on by the growth of the Silicon Roundabout, jacking up the rents and pushing out the creatives that had been there for years, as is the story of gentrification across trendy East London. It was definitely hip to be in this square, and sadly that came at a hefty price.
Many were forced to leave, but we stayed and the clients in The Square continued to grow from 2000 to 2015 – Jamie T, The Kooks, Paulo Nutini, Tom Odell, Plan B, Marina & The Diamonds, Razorlight, Rizzle Kicks, Hurts, Bat For Lashes, Crystal Fighters, Patrick Wolf, Jack Penate, 2 Bears and so many more.
A few years ago we said goodbye to The Garden studios nearby which got turned into a Pret a Manger. Last year we lost our longterm let studios in Hoxton Market, and then last week we learned our new landlords would not be renewing our lease in The Square. Over Christmas our previous landlords had sold the building to a new company and with our lease set to expire at the end of March 2015 we had an inkling this would be the case.
So, the spiritual home of Miloco will be no more. The building that was built by the late Henry Crallan, founder of Miloco, has come to an end. It’s very sad for us and maybe for some of the clients that worked there, especially as there was no reason for us to want to close it. It will be sadly missed and we will remember the place with fond memories. For me this was the place where I learned to assist, engineer (badly) and run studios well. Without this one studio there would have been no Miloco. Somehow I think it will be hard for the new owners to have as many fun times as we had there, or match the amount of creativity that came out of that building. But it’s great the studio is going out on a high, and we want to thank some of the recent clients who have been keeping it busy – M.I.A., Skepta, The Hunnas, The xx and many many more… to all the past and recent clients, we thank you.
Miloco will move onwards and upwards. We’ll relocate the studio but unfortunately not in Hoxton. However the spirit is in the people that work there and the music that is made, so it will live on forever, just with a different postcode.
Farewell to The Square.
Nick Young – Managing Director, Miloco Studios
Take a look at The Square’s final days here.
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