Chung King Ceases Varick Street Operations

Chung King Studios owner John King has confirmed that his multi-studio complex, located in a 20,000-square-foot rental space at 170 Varick Street, has ceased operations.

Depeche Mode and producers joined John King at Chung King

According to a company announcement, Chung King will be moving and expanding its operations over the next few months, and expects to be up and running by “the busy spring and summer season.”

It’s worth noting that 2009 was presumably a good year at Chung King, with long-term bookings by Phish, Depeche Mode, Maxwell and Moby, multiple projects involving the Lil’ Wayne and Kanye West camps, and notable collaborations between MGMT/Ratatat with Kid Cudi, and producer No I.D. with Richard Ashcroft.

Chung King has been located at 170 Varick since the mid-90s, but was originally located in Chinatown and known as The Chung King House of Metal. Opened in ’79 and incorporated as Chung King Studios in ’86, that original location is often noted for its involvement in early NYC hip-hop, with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin producing many of the early Def Jam artists in these studios. This was where Run DMC, the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, among others, recorded early hits.

Expanding to the Varick Street location, King built several high-end studios, “Blue,” “Red,” “Green” and “Gold” rooms among them, around large-format Neve and SSL consoles. In recent years, he’d built additional digital production suites around Digidesign controllers.

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