+44 (0)20 7232 0008 bookings@miloco.co.uk

• Recording Studios
• Gear
• Builds
• Producer Management
• DrumDrops
• Online Mixing
• Studio Team
• About

Studios

Studio Categories

Engineers

Clients

Blog

Henry Sarmiento on Sonic Vista Studios

Ibiza guide Essential Ibiza met Henry Sarmiento, the owner of Miloco’s Sonic Vista Studios, to talk Lady Gaga, why the Spain recording studio will one day be considered “the Motown of the Mediterranean,” and why music is to Sarmiento “one of the most powerful things on the planet.”

What is it that brought you to Ibiza?

I came because I love the island; I didn’t move to Ibiza for the clubbing life. I came to represent the music industry and I was the first person who brought a Pro Tools | HD system here, and that’s the industry standard for audio. People who come here call me because I get it right; I make sure the clients are getting the right sound.

So when was your first time here?

I came in 2003 for a week with my good friend Miguel Migs, who’s a big DJ from San Francisco. A whole bunch of us came because he was playing at Pacha, and I really loved the island. It has a very special spirit.

What were you doing before?

I was running Herbie Herbert’s studio in San Francisco. He’s a guy who’s responsible for over 400 million records. He put together bands like Journey, Santana, Roxette, and he’s why my backbone is very professional and honest. There’s no time for slacking in his camp!

You were 16 when you started working in the music industry. Was music something you grew up with?

Well it’s kind of an interesting story. When I was 15 I hitchhiked to a Max Creek concert. I was living in Vermont at the time and there wasn’t much culture. I was from NYC so I needed some vibes! You know, I was used to the city. So this gig was a two-and-a-half hour drive away and I calculated it’d take me six hours to hitchhike there. But then I went, got picked up by the second car, and was driven all the way to Hartford. I got there in two-and-a-half hours. It was easy. So I got to the concert venue and thought, “What do I do now?” I was bored! There was this huge parking lot with warehouse parking docks, so I sat in one and chilled out in the sun. And at 5.30pm this big truck started backing up right where I was sitting, and it turned out it was carrying the band equipment. I told them my story and they asked if I wanted to help out. They gave me a pass, and I helped them with the show. I got to experience it from the perspective of the band and the crew, and to watch the crowd from behind the scenes. My friends were like, “What the fuck are you doing up on stage!” Anyway after the show, the band were like, “Hey, you want to come to New York with us tomorrow? We’re doing another show,” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s my city!” And it was a night of pure rock’n’roll. I was underage at the time but I was with the band so it wasn’t a problem. That was a super cool weekend. The next day I got back on the freeway and hitchhiked home. My mom was like, “Where you been?”

See more at Essential Ibiza.

The Church Studios press roundup

Audio Media, Fast-and-Wide.com, and PSNEurope have reported on The Church Studios resurrection this month.

The November 2014 issue of Audio Media has just been published and is available now. See The Church Studios news here.

Fast-and-Wide.com brought the latest news on The Church Studios returning to commercial operation here.

The November 2014 issue of PSNEurope is now available to read online or download as a PDF. Read The Church Studios news online here.A few of the initial news stories on The Church Studios are at Creative Planet Network, Digital Pro Sound, Lighting & Sound America, Mi2N, Mix Magazine, and Sound & Video Contractor.

Paul Epworth and Flood secure places on the MPG Awards shortlist

Miloco partners Paul Epworth and Flood are two hugely influential producers who have made it onto the shortlist for the 2015 Music Producers Guild Awards.

Steve Levine, chairman of the Music Producers Guild, said: “Once again we had a fantastic response to our request for nominations, with many new names featured in just about every awards category. MPG full members have now cast their votes to create our shortlist for 2015 and the Award winners will be decided by a panel of judges who will meet before the end of this year.”

The winner of the Music Producers Guild’s Producer of the Year Award also receives a BRIT Award for Best Producer, and both awards will be presented at the Awards ceremony, which takes place at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel in Vauxhall, London on 12 February 2015.

Full details are here.

Tom Odell – Real Love

Recorded in Miloco’s The Pool studio with Joseph Rodgers engineering and mixed by Dan Grech, Real Love by Tom Odell, a cover of the classic John Lennon song, has been picked for this year’s John Lewis Christmas ad.

The John Lewis ad premiered on TV during Channel 4’s reality show Gogglebox.

Rover by Royce Wood Junior is now available

Royce Wood Junior’s track Rover is up now and available to download immediately when you pre-order his forthcoming Rover – EP.

Rover – EP and the whole forthcoming album titled Ashen Tang, both of which will be released through 37 Adventures, were recorded at The Summerhouse writing studio on Osea Island back in July of this year! Royce, who stayed in The Laurels accommodation, wrote, produced, and recorded the whole thing along with resident assistant Kit Carpenter.

Rover – EP is released on 1 December 2014 and the album will be coming out in Spring.

On the Rover – EP’s title track a broken falsetto deftly skips across sparse beats. Listen to the track Rover here, pre-order the 12-inch vinyl here, and pre-order the digital EP here.

Alan Moulder chooses PMC

Respected UK producer, engineer, and mixing specialist Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Foals) has bought a pair of PMC twotwo.8 monitors, supplied by Miloco Gear, for his personal mix room, based at Assault & Battery Studios in northwest London. Moulder began to really notice PMCs when working at Trent Reznor’s studio on Nine Inch Nails’ 2013 Hesitation Marks album. “Of course, I’d heard about them, and working on Trent’s album, I liked them a lot.” Reznor has been a user of both PMC MB2 XBD-A midfields and AML2 nearfields for several years.

In early 2014, Assault & Battery Studios obtained a pair of the largest speakers in PMC’s twotwo nearfield series, the twotwo.8s, from Miloco Gear. After his experience mixing Nine Inch Nails on PMCs, Moulder wanted to try them. “I’ve got used to working with certain monitors over the years,” he admits. “So I didn’t really want to like the PMCs… but I instantly did! They don’t have a hyped sound – they’re very flat – but they are very detailed, even at low volumes, which I like. I will often spend a long time working on very sonically dense tracks, and you can’t crank the speakers too loud all the time when you’re working like that.”

From his earliest work, Moulder has had a reputation for producing great results when tracking and mixing very full arrangements. “It’s true!” he reflects. “If people have massive track counts, they come to me. I never seem to get minimal stuff to work on…! But that means I need speakers that can give you detail. With the twotwo.8s, you still get the full picture, even at low levels… the response is consistent at different volumes, and you can still hear the bottom end in full.”

Moulder’s twotwo.8s were installed in his studio at Assault & Battery in the early summer. His first sizeable project with them was premixing tracks in August on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack album for the smash success film thriller Gone Girl, released in October 2014. The mixing on the soundtrack was completed on the PMCs at Reznor’s studio in LA.

Special price for Lisson Grove

The Unity Audio Lisson Grove R-X24 vintage style tube compressor can now be snapped up at the special price of £2,099 +VAT from Miloco Gear.

The R-X24 is based on the classic Altec compressor that was used intensively in the 60s. However, it has some modifications. Some of which are in the circuit and some functional. The quality of each component in the unit is of the highest possible standard, and the unit is hand built from top to bottom.

Contact Miloco Gear to demo the R-X24.

Ben Jackson on Kele – Trick

Partly engineered by Ben Jackson, Kele’s new album Trick is out now. Kele mostly went into The Bridge to record the album. Read a background interview with Jackson here.

Where did you start working on Trick?
I’ve worked with Kele for quite a while now. Kele always comes into the sessions with ideas, so the first thing I will always do is programme a beat and play in a chord sequence for him to vibe to based on what he describes. So technically Kele started work pre sessions, then we got into The Bridge and started making his ideas tangible.

What were some of the technical considerations when recording the album?
I wanted to make sure Kele’s vocal was clear and full. Recording the vocals and dynamic range is key to making an artist feel comfortable and creative during the session. I used compression on the way in and got the compressor to only react and kick in when Kele hit the loud notes so as not to distort to tape. Using a fast release setting it made the compression much more transparent and levelled the signal without overly colouring the sound, essentially limiting. Recording guitars was important to achieve a full body guitar sound and give the guys plenty to work with in the mix. Synth/bass/drum programming was done within Logic, each sound carefully chosen to keep in line with the overall sound of the record and Kele’s vibe. Most of the recording was done to give Kele, Alex [Epton, producer and engineer] and Tom [Belton, producer] as much to work with as possible in the production/mix stage.

What was the vocal chain setup?
For Kele I found a Neumann U47 into an API 7600 channel strip worked very well. The 47 matched Kele’s voice perfectly. For one session we couldn’t get the 47 so we used a CMV 563. It wasn’t the same vibe, but I have to say I was suitably impressed. The API channel strip is very versatile with buttons to change the configuration easily. The preamp sounds great and the compressor is extremely responsive which helped when limiting and taming the vocal to tape. Plus personally I’m a huge fan of switchable EQ to dial in the same settings each time.

Were there any challenges or special technical skills you had to rely on during the sessions?
Kele likes to work very fast. Sometimes we would work on up to eight songs a day using Logic Pro and Pro Tools. We would also have a vocal chain, guitar chain, bass chain, MIDI keyboard, and piano setup in the room and would bounce between each setup. It was quite challenging to stay on top of everything!

What was the atmosphere like during the sessions?
Fantastic. I always enjoy working on music that I would listen to at home.
Kele is a very inspirational person with an incredibly strong work ethic. The setup in The Bridge made us both feel very comfortable when working and I feel that always makes for the best product. This also helped when doing long days (up to 14 hours!). One major reason I personally wanted to continue using The Bridge is the monitoring. When working on the tracks I had full faith that what I was listening was true and would translate when I left the room, making creative, engineering, and mix decisions easy to make. I’m a big fan of committing early on to decisions in terms of sound and mix, it helps to capture and keep the original vibe being created.

New booth at 123 Studios

Producer, engineer, and mixer Brett Shaw recently put in a new booth at 123 Studios.

The south London recording studio is now more set up for live recording with bands that want to track everything at once.

One more booth with sightlines to the existing two may be installed in the future.

The Bunker Studio adds BAE 1084 modules

The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, New York just added eight more channels of BAE 1084 to the preamp rack in Studio A.

The rack now holds 14 1084 modules, two BAE 1073 modules, four channels of Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5012, and four custom REDD.47 tubes.

Four API 512c preamps have been moved to the compressor rack, and four more custom REDD.47 tubes are now in portable racks.