Martin Rev Digitizes Suicide Masters at Dubway Studios

Martin Rev, of the legendary NYC band “Suicide,” entrusted Dubway to digitize the original masters from Suicide’s self titled 1977 debut album. The audio was on a 2 inch 24 track reel, which our staff carefully restored by baking, and then digitized via playback off Dubway’s trusty Studer tape deck, with Martin in attendance.

Their quintessential sound holds up even in its rawest forms, with these masters containing Alan Vega’s vocals, and Martin’s bass, synth, and drum tracks for some of their biggest hits.

Gladys Night and the Pips - Original Multitrack restored at Dubway

Gladys Night’s original 2” 24 track master recordings were exhumed from a soggy basement in NJ and brought to Dubway for tape restoration and digitization. Among the tracks - her original mega hit, “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Holy Cow!

With the audio files now safely ensconced in the cyber vaults of Sony, one wonders about the countless other classics that are hidden away, biding their time on some moldy shelf, awaiting discovery.

Hearing the Pips backing vocals, soloed, was one of those special, inspiring moments afforded by our access to multitracks from the past. (We also digitized the Fugees’ The Score.)

Dubway’s 2 inch Studer tape deck earned its stripes on this one!

"Love Is Love Is Love - The Musical!" Rehearsal in Dubway's Mezzanine

Love is Love is Love singers rehearse in the Mezz.

Cast members of “Love Is Love Is Love — The Musical!” by Michelle Lee rehearsed for a performance at 54 Below in Dubway Studios’ Mezzanine recently.

This is not Michelle Lee’s first show: she has composed another musical, ‘Helen of Troy’, with producer Ed Sayles.

We matched the dimensions of our Mezz space to that of the stage at 54 Below. This made the rehearsal feel as true to the final performance as possible. Engineer Violette Furton played audio from the Mezz’s speakers to mimic the acoustics of the stage as well.

Cellist and Violinist for the production.

The rehearsing cast featured 9 singers. 1 pianist, 1 violinist and 1 cellist.

Check out a duet from the rehearsal below!

Yacouba Sissoko Records For Nick Jr.’s “Bubble Guppies”

Yacouba Sissoko and his kora.

Malinke (“from Mali”) kora player, Yacouba Sissoko recently recorded a song for Nick Jr.’s “Bubble Guppies,” in Dubway’s Mezzanine.

The song was produced and directed by Emmy award-winning composer, Michael Rubin, and will make an appearance on Bubble Guppies’ newest season.

A kora.

The kora is a traditional Malinke instrument with 21-strings and a gourd resonator. In Mali, the kora is used to pass on oral history through song. Sissoko belongs to a long line of kora players from a well-known Djeli family.

Senegalese Singing Phenom, Wally Seck, Records at Dubway Studios

(From left to right): Iqram Ismail, engineer Violette Furton, “Bassy” Bob Brockmann, and Marlon Saunders in the Dubway Mezz control room.

Venmo co-founder, Iqram Ismail, recently directed a “world music” project at Dubway Studios, featuring popular Senegalese singer, Wally Seck.

The session also featured Grammy award winning engineer, “Bassy” Bob Brockmann, who mixed the song.

Dubway’s extensive list of outboard gear — such has our UAD 2-610 pre-amp and 1176LN Limiter — allowed “Bassy” Bob to achieve a top-tier mix.

Record producer, Marlon Saunders, was also recruited to do the background vocals on this track.

You can check out the music video for this session below.

French-Haitian Musician Erick Paul Records Guitar At Dubway

Erick Paul tunes his rare Ramirez acoustic guitar, while engineer Charley Shealey adjusts an AKG C12 mic.

Dubway hosted French-Haitian musician, Erick Paul, to re-record guitar for an unreleased 1997 record. Paul recorded an album in 1997 at Power Station (recording studio) in New York City, but never published it.

He took advantage of Dubway’s 2” 24 track Studer tape deck to convert the tape to a digital format.

Engineer Charley Shealey oversaw Erick Paul’s re-recording of guitars, and the mixing of Paul’s songs.

At one point during the session, Paul was filmed by a PBS camera crew, for a special on Haiti.

Paul has written many songs about the tragedies in Haiti over the last couple decades, such as his song “Renaissance.”

Paul’s work with Dubway spanned multiple days as he had to re-recorded a total of twelve songs!

Dubway’s Nathaniel Reichman Brings John Luther Adams’ “Ten Thousand Birds” To Life

Dubway’s senior engineer, Nathaniel Reichman, was the producer for John Luther Adams’ most recent work, “Ten Thousand Birds.” The 70-minute orchestration emulates the sonic ambience of the outdoors — with a focus on birds — as morning transitions to afternoon and then night. The piece was played at the 55,000 square foot Park Ave Armory in Manhattan. 

Producer Nathaniel Reichman stands among his 7.0.4 microphone/speaker array, used to record John Luther Adams’ “Ten Thousand Birds” at the Park Ave Armory.

This installment of “Ten Thousand Birds” was performed by orchestra ensemble, Alarm Will Sound. Throughout the performance, Nathaniel and his colleagues (recording engineers Silas Brown and Doron Schächter) captured the piece in surround sound.

Usually functioning as a community fitness/event center, the 55,000 square foot Park Ave Armory was host to a different kind of function: an “immersive concert hall” for the work of John Luther Adams.

The performance was attended by many: some meditated, others lay on the floor, and most walked around (including Talking Heads’ David Byrne).

Audience member at John Luther Adams’ “Ten Thousand Birds,” surrounded by the orchestral performance by Alarm Will Sound.

This performance was a fantastic opportunity to capture audio in a 7.0.4 microphone/speaker array, for Dolby Atmos and Apple Spatial Audio playback purposes.

Check out the New York Times’ review of the event.

Church Street School For Music and Art honors our late friend and collaborator Tom Goodkind

We at Dubway were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of our friend Tom Goodkind, a true multihyphenate who brought his wonderful musical sensibilities to our studios many, many times over the years, for session that always ran on the wild, fun, and productive side. In addition to his work directing and conducting The TriBattery Pops–which he also founded–he lived a colorful and deeply engaged life. In the words of the Church Street School For Music, who are honoring Tom with a tribute at their annual gala next month:

“Tom was a longtime resident of Battery Park City. But it was much more than his years of living in Downtown NYC that made him such an important figure in Lower Manhattan. His drive to tackle issues facing the people in his community, and passion for bettering the lives of others made him an important neighborhood leader who strove to leave his community better than he found it.

Another of Tom’s key passions was music. He spearheaded various musical ensembles during his life, the most recent being the TriBattery Pops all-volunteer community band that he founded in 2004. The Pops practiced at Church Street School for many years, helping to expand our musical community with so much openness, fun and humor!

During the early 1980’s Tom also co-founded The Washington Squares, a neo-beatnik folk revival group, and played a part in the creation and management of legendary NYC music venues including Irving Plaza, the Peppermint Lounge, and Roseland.”

We will all miss Tom’s wit, musical sensitivities, and dedication to housing access and the arts in his beloved NYC Downtown community.

For those local to NYC who wish to attend the CSSMA gala, you can find tickets to the annual gala here..

Randi Zuckerberg's crypto covers record at Dubway

Randi Zuckerberg–tech entrepreneur, Web3/crypto evangelist, and sister to Mark Zuckerberg–joined staff engineer Sydney Fuqua in our NYC studios last month to record a few covers extolling the values of cryptocurrency. The session was a freewheeling one–our engineer guest featured on one of the songs, and jumped in to sing backup during the choruses–and it produced a number of covers, which you can find on Zuckerberg’s Twitter or all over the internet; you can also find her cover of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, originally by Twisted Sister, below.

In the Mezzanine with Carolyn Sloan

Carolyn sloan (front center) with her ensemble in the Mezzanine.

Award-winning author and composer Carolyn Sloan brought an excellent group of musicians to our NYC Mezzanine studio this past month for a recording with staff engineer Marc Frongillo. The ensemble included a string quartet with flute, oboe, french horn, and clarinet.

With our Mezzanine’s spaciously high ceilings and precise acoustics, ensembles can record naturalistic group performances and add any additional desired spatial effects (reverb, echo, etc) in post, for a controlled approach to classical-style recordings. As with all recordings made in the Mezzanine, the session was tracked through our SSL 4064 G+ console, with some of the outboard gear inserted for a particular tone.

You can listen to some of Sloan’s previous work here, and watch the same space in the future for these recordings!

Tape restoration: before and after

Desperately in need of a clean!

We do many types of audio project at Dubway Studios, including a large variety of work in the audio restoration and preservation fields. These types of jobs are constantly ongoing quietly in our studios–we have a room dedicated to tape transfers and audio restoration–but rarely get a shine publicly. What better time to show the process in action?

The above tape came to us with a few different molds on the outside, as you can see from the discoloration on the tape. Tapes in storage can get dry over time, becoming brittle and cracked, or moldy if the storage location is too damp.

If you’re curious (or have tapes of your own that need some TLC), check out the process below, and see before/after pictures at the bottom!

Nick Rastegar tracks "Project Runway" music with Violette Furton

Multi-instrumentalist composer and producer Nick Rastegar joined us late last year for a recording that recently premiered on the current season of Bravo’s Project Runway.

The piece is a solo violin performance, tracked by Dubway staff engineer Violette Furton in our Main Floor Studios. Our various rooms in the Main Floor facilities can be linked together with lots of configurability which, along with the acoustic treatments present in all of our sound booths, allows us to use the same room to track Rastegar’s beautiful writing that we use to record audiobooks and podcasts.

We’ll update this posting when clips from the episode become public!

Nuala records in the Mezzanine

London recording artist Nuala joined us in the Mezzanine studio earlier this month for a productive tracking session of guitar, vocals, and vocal comping. The artist is in the midst of a set of US shows–she just performed in NYC last week, LA this week, and will be back in London for a show at Joan in Shoreditch on the 18th–and took some time out from her performance schedule to get some new music recorded with us.

Studio engineer Charley Shealy helmed the SSL 4064 G+ console for the recordings, ensuring a smooth consistent vocal tone and working with Nuala to get the right sound.

Check out photos from the session from us (and Nuala’s IG), and find her music on all major streaming platforms (or listen to a recent cut here)

Jeremy Denk's "Every Good Boy Does Fine" records at Dubway NYC

Jeremy Denk with engineer Violette Furton in the studio lobby.

Legendary concert pianist, writer, lecturer, and teacher Jeremy Denk just published a memoir, titled Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story In Music Lessons, and we were thrilled to host the recordings for the audiobook release! The work will be available through publisher Penguin Random House, who we’ve been lucky to partner closely with over the years on many projects.

Denk joined director May Wuthrich, producer Diane McKiernan, and Dubway staff engineer Violette Furton on a virtual call, with some participants in-studio with Denk and Furton and some remote via linked video call.

You can read a small preview to the bigger work in the form of a column Denk wrote for the New Yorker in 2013, or find the audiobook here in late March!

Dubway edits John Luther Adams recordings for upcoming release

Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer John Luther Adams is nearing the final stretches of work on his newest upcoming release, Houses of the Wind, with Dubway lead engineer Nathaniel Reichman. As with all of Adams’s music, the album is set to release on Cold Blue Music, and will likely be available some time this spring.

Most recently, the tracks from Adams’s ensemble’s principal recording sessions were edited in-studio by staff engineer Keenan DuBois to remove any extraneous performance noises. For many types of highly dynamic, delicate music, all performance noises–things like chair scrapes, rustling, coughs or sneezes, and other similar intrusions– are carefully removed from the recordings using a variety of digital editing tools. Dubway’s staff are well experienced in this type of editing from the work we do in TV/film dialogue, post-production, location audio recording and cleanup, and digitization/tape restoration, as well as in musical applications like this project.

We can’t wait to hear what these mixes sound like when they’re finished! Keep an eye on the Cold Blue Music (linked above) website for more release date news.

Halsey shoots for Savage x Fenty, tracked by Dubway West

Award-winning pop superstar Halsey featured on a glowing list of performers at 2019’s Savage x Fenty show at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn; while we weren’t able to share it at the time, we’re happy to be able to reveal that the performance was mixed by Dubway West’s own Chris Montgomery! Halsey premiered “Graveyard” at this event, which went on to be certified platinum in multiple countries including the US.

Check out a bit of video from the event on our instagram, or full footage of the show below!

Dubway West tracks new Wombats album, hits UK #1

Liverpool rock band The Wombats have released their fifth album, Fix Yourself, Not The World, hitting #1 on the UK album charts in a first for the band. The majority of the record was tracked at Dubway West with lead engineer Jonas Jalhay behind the boards.

We’re pumped to see the album doing so well–beating out heavyweights like Ed Sheeran, Adele, and The Weeknd–and couldn’t be happier for the band and rest of the crew.

Take a listen to the lead single “This Car Drives All By Itself” above, and geek out over a pedalboard and lovely lineup of guitars in the control room photo below, courtesy of the band’s IG. Congratulations Wombats!

"Heartbreak County" cast album set for official release at the end of the month!

Playwright Ramsay Burgess’s newest production, Heartbreak County, has had a long road to completion, weather the pandemic, theatre closures, and more. Today, part of the process comes to fruition as Burgess and the cast & crew shared that the show’s cast album, which was recorded and mixed at Dubway Studios with studio engineer Marc Frongillo, has a release date set for January 31st!

Watch the release video above, and check out the show’s Instagram page for more info. Congratulations to Ramsay and all involved!

LA Marathon's Winston House Stage + Dubway West

Tai Verdes performs a sunny daytime set in Century City Park, Los Angeles.

LA venue Winston House has been on the rise, and we’ve been thrilled to partner regularly with them on events and shoots at their venue space. This past November, however, we got to take the experience to a park in LA’s Century City neighborhood for the LA Marathon Finish Festival, where Winston House supplied the talent for one of the festival’s stages.

Artists Tai Verdes and The Winston House Band kept the stage active for the duration, with stage direction and audio handled by a large Dubway West crew, including stage manager Luke Gerard Webb and deck audio technicians Maja Sazdic, Alex Acosta, Elizabeth Morales, and Journey Kim.