Hip-Hop Hits Brewing Out In Williamsburg

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: The Brewery is in a new class of NYC recording studios owned by young, ambitious engineer/producers who experienced the big commercial studio business as interns and assistants. And then they moved on…

At The Brewery: Andrew Krivonos and Dot Da Genius

A one-room facility with a log-cabin room-within-a-room design and enormous rooftop expanse off a sharp lounge, The Brewery is home to engineer/producer Andrew Krivonos and producer Dot Da Genius who joined forces in the Spring of ’09 to open the studio in its current location.

Located off the L train just a couple blocks into the industrial sprawl of Grand Street, The Brewery is, as Krivonos places it, “five minutes across the border to Queens, 10 minutes to the city and in one of the more bustling neighborhoods in Brooklyn.”

This locale is key to the studio’s mix of hip-hop and R&B, pop and full-band projects, which Krivonos classifies as “about 70% independent musicians and 30% record label work” that includes “a lot of Brooklyn talent and a lot of Queens talent.”

The guys behind the studio may be young, but they’ve been at this awhile with some huge spikes of success along the way. “The story of the studio dates back awhile now,” Krivonos explains. “In 2004, I was working at Abercrombie & Fitch with Kid Cudi and this dude, Riliwan, who was working with Dot as a producer. And we all started fucking around musically. Dot had a home studio and I’d started making the moves to open my own commercial studio.

HeadBanga Muzik @ The Brewery

“I’d been interning and working at studios like Avatar and Legacy since I was 17, and by the time I was 19, I was taking out business loans to get my own studio going,” Krivonos shares. “So me and Dot had parallel studios for awhile — I was in Park Slope and then in another space on Meserole Street — and then we merged into this new space last year.”

The Brewery is more than just a recording studio. It’s home to Dot Da Genius’ Headbanga Muzik, his production company featuring writer/producers OlaTheProducer and Woodrow Skillson, and also home to engineer/producer Nick Brandes and his Writing Room team.

Krivonos’ work with the Wu-Tang Clan, particularly Raekwon and Method Man, drives a steady stream of mixtape sessions, including recent Wu-Tang progeny like Ceazar (signed to Raekwon’s Ice H20 Records) and fellow Staten Island native, Jo Jo Pelligrino. NYC’s DJ Whoo Kid and Styles P have also been Brewery-produced.

Engineer Nick Brandes in The Brewery control room

The studio itself — designed and built by Krivonos and crew — encompasses a large control room based around Pro Tools HD, a Control 24 work-surface and an API, Avalon, Neve, SSL and Universal Audio-filled producer’s desk, and a mid-sized live room with adjacent vocal booth. Roomy reception, lounge and the awesome outdoor space round out the facility as top-notch for a single booking. And these, they get in abundance.

“We’re not the kind of place where people book out full days at a time,” Krivonos points out. “People tend to book The Brewery for 4-5 hours at a time, and we’ll have three or four (or five) of those sessions a day.

“We’re really good at being extremely efficient,” Krivonos adds. “We’re always buying and selling gear. And all of our engineers are very fast. They’re all up with the keyboard shortcuts in Pro Tools. We have everything wired and setup so that things can be easily adjusted and we always have assistants on hand so we’re able to do a lot of sessions.”

HUSTLE & HEART: BUILDING THE BREWERY

Popping our heads into the studio during our visit to the Brewery, we catch a minute of a slammin track by Young G, playing back over the studio’s Equator Q15 monitors. Sunlight streams in through a large skylight, and the room — though filled with equipment, keyboards and tape machine — feels open and full of possibility. The artist gets up and moves around the room, soaking in the sounds.

Brian Hong session in the Spring '10

This is Krivonos’ third studio build-out. The Brewery takes its name from its former location at the Danbro Studios (now a DIY venue) on Meserole Street in East Williamsburg once known as “Brewer’s Row” when Brooklyn was home to over a dozen major breweries at the turn of the century.

“The previous studio was on a smaller scale,” says Krivonos. “This current space was a big open, raw space and we had to do everything from the AC to the electrical. We built everything. And we did it on a very tight budget and schedule. We banged the whole thing out in four and a half weeks. But it was like the worst four weeks of my life! We were running sessions over at the previous location and then coming here and doing construction the rest of the day and night.”

This hustle is what’s building the Brewery, figuratively, as well. “It’s been a very fast growth and we’re getting really good business,” Krivonos notes.

Ceazar, Andrew Krivonos and Reason in the Brewery last winter.

“It went from being my side studio, where I was working with clients who couldn’t afford to work with me at Legacy, to being a facility that gets booked out every single day. We have to keep moving because we need more and more. We’re in a five-year-lease here, but I’m already thinking about what’s next. How are we going to expand when the time comes?”

The summer’s been typically light, says Krivonos. But this gauge is based on completely solid bookings the rest of the year.

Between Krivonos, Brandes, Dot and his engineer Jay Powell, HeadBanga and two other house engineers — Nick D’Alessandro and Bryan Lampe — running The Brewery is as Krivonos describes, “a total balancing act.” But for right here, right now, they seem to be striking the right balance.

Recent clients at The Brewery include pop singer/songwriter Brian Hong with producer/engineer Rated PG, Shemspeed artists Y-Love and DeScribe with producer Diwon and rock band Do You See the Dark. Visit The Brewery at http://www.thebreweryrecordingstudio.com.

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