NYC Studio Tour: Queens Recording Studios, Part I

The studio scene in Queens is often overlooked, but perhaps not for much longer. Long Island City is home to a burgeoning musical community, while Astoria has been the home of one of NYC’s busiest production facilities since 1921.

Today we take you for a tour of a few of the most active studios in Queens, stopping to focus on one of the borough’s biggest, and one of its most compact.

KAUFMAN ASTORIA MUSIC AND SOUND
http://www.kasmusic.com

At first glance, the music studios at Kaufman Astoria can seem intimidating to the average musician.

The halls of this landmark building are filled with history in a literal sense:

Original theatrical posters line the corridors leading to the recording studio, and remind visitors of 90-years worth of films produced here, from The Cocoanuts (The Marx Brothers’ first feature) through Men in Black III (which wrapped shooting just before our visit).

Joe Castellon, Creative Director of the Music and Sound division, says that new musicians are sometimes worried about where they fit into all this. But according to him, “you’ve got to throw that all away.”

“The most important thing is to be relaxed,” he says. “I like to make it so the musicians feel like they’re playing in their living room, or singing in the shower.”

KAS Music and Sound Studio A

And Castellon might be the perfect person to put players at ease in a production complex that spans a full city block. He walks these halls with the comfort of a man in his bathrobe, cracking jokes with brawny guys building sets for Bourne Legacy, waving at every custodian he passes.

As a producer, engineer and arranger, Castellon has used this studio to record orchestras and big-bands, rock groups and R&B singers – and not just for the films and TV shows that shoot here.

In addition to serving TV shows including Nurse Jackie and Law & Order, and hosting filmmakers like Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese, the studios at Kaufman Astoria have attracted recording projects from Alison Krauss, R.E.M., Tony Bennett, Itzhak Perlman, Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis.

Studio A at KAS Music and Sound is a remarkable 2,400-square foot music space capable of housing a 70-piece orchestra.

“It’s one of the last studios of its kind in the city,” says Castellon, continuously smiling through owl-eyed glasses and a Frank Zappa mustache. “The main room has 2.7-seconds of reverb.”

“[Using gobos] we can re-configure it in all sorts of ways. Each section can have its own sound. You can have the strings players sounding really wet and live on one end, while the horns stay completely dry at the other end. All the things you might do with effects you can do right here in the room instead.”

Two conjoined isolation booths that tie into the room are larger than many pro studios in their own right. They’re also a shielded by a Faraday cage, which was built into the walls by the U.S. Army when it used the building throughout World War II and the years that followed. This hidden metal meshwork keeps out radio-frequency interference – and communist spies.

Unsurprisingly, the studio is at no loss for gear. Although Castellon clearly enjoys the Neve console, multiple tape machines, Pro Tools HD rig, outboard compressors and vintage microphones at the studio’s disposal, he can be dismissive of them:

“Great records are made, not by great recorders, but by great performances.”

“When you come here, you’re going to get a great recording, of course. It’ll be as good as or better than anywhere else on the planet – There’s no reason to worry about it. The other part of our job is making musicians as comfortable as possible so they can give it the best they have.”

He even makes recording great music seems like a quasi-religious experience. “That’s what really captures people,” he says. “When musicians get together and make some truth come through those speakers.”

If there’s anything here that helps make Castellon himself comfortable, it’s the listening environment:

Joe Castellon at the Neve V-60 in KAS Studio A

“It’s a true dead-end, live-end kind of control room,” he says. “There’s no reflections coming from the speaker-side of the room. The corners have deep traps that break up standing waves, and the back wall has a diffuser that makes it completely invisible to your ears.”

“When we had [blind tenor] Andrea Bocelli here I asked him: ‘Hey Andrea, can you hear that wall right behind you?’ Blind people can usually tell where they are in a room just by listening. But he said ‘no way, it just sounds like the room keeps going and going straight back.’”

“This way, you hear the sound only once – when it’s going from the speakers to your ears. There are no reflections anywhere to color the sound, so you can always trust what you’re hearing.”

Taking a tour of the building, scale starts to become apparent. The half-million square feet of production space are better described in acres (11-and-a-half of them) or, if you prefer, hectares (over-four-and-a-half of those).

We walked by soundstages the size of small town centers where film companies construct and destroy virtual cities. Other rooms showed that they could encompass a suburban high school, an entire floor of an inner-city hospital, the Cosbys’ house, an entire block known as Sesame Street.

By the time we sat back down in the control room to recap, the world had somehow become small and manageable once again. Like Castellon, the building itself seems to have a sense of humor. For all the memorabilia Kaufman Astoria has on display, only one film was honored with what I might call a “shrine”.  If you look hard enough on your next visit, you might just find an entire hallway intersection  adorned with bold and ornate set-pieces. They come from the Ishtar – a film known almost exclusively as one of the most high-profile flops of all time.

Also in Queens…

THE BUDDY PROJECT
http://www.thebuddyproject.com

Kieran Kelly’s Buddy Project studio is an uber-affordable personal favorite located in Astoria, Queens.

The Buddy Project, Astoria

Although its entire floorplan could make a restroom at Kaufman Astoria look like a gymnasium, The Buddy Project is a surprisingly great-sounding, absurdly budget-friendly space that comes well-appointed, featuring a Pro Tools HD system and several flavors of custom-made 500-series modules from Eisen Audio.

The live room, blessed with high-ceilings and ample natural light, is where Sufjan Stevens recorded much of his sonically-elegant Illinois – using only an Audio Technica 4033 and his own Roland VS 880 digital multi-track.

The studio comes equipped with several well-kept drum kits and a pair of iso cabs for pre-production and basics, has a more-than serviceable mic locker and acts as a great space for acoustic overdubs of any kind.

SPIN MUSIC STUDIOS
http://www.spinmusicstudios.com

Owned by Pete Benjamin, LIC’s Spin Studios is a multi-room, 4,000 square-foot recording facility located at the foot of the Queensboro bridge.

Studio A features 68 channel SSL 4064 G / G+ console, while Studio B houses a 52-input Amek console and is designed with a “wide-open, loft-like feel.”

A BLOODY GOOD RECORD
http://www.abloodygoodrecord.com

A Bloody Good record is an affordable Pro Tools HD studio in Long Island City operated by Mark Law. It features Pro Tools HD, a Dangerous summing system, two sound-treated recording booths and a surprisingly expansive control-room and lounge.

SOUNDWORKS RECORDING
http://www.soundworksrecording.com

Soundworks is an Astoria studio run by Sandra & Kamilo Kratc. It features “four individually floated spaces” and a Yamaha G7 Grand piano.

THE WILD ARCTIC
http://www.thewildarctic.com

The Wild Arctic is an affordable Pro Tools HD studio in LIC specializing in both indie pop and punk rock.

The studio encompasses an ample live room, control room and two iso-booths. Clients include The Hold Steady, Agnostic Front, Bouncing Souls, and Kill Your Idols.

Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based producer/engineer who works with uncommon artists, and a journalist who writes about music and how we make it. Visit him at http://www.justincolletti.com.

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