The Pool - 'Extreme live Recording'
"It has an exceptional collection of vintage and modern esoteric equipment, and I feel lucky to have used the space as it is like a musical playroom - full of great instruments, effects, toys and percussion too" - Paul Epworth (Producer)
"You can get away without having a separate control room and record stuff perfectly well, and what you gain in communication and work-rate is amazing" - Ben Hillier (Producer)
The Pool Information
The Pool is a fantastically exciting environment to work in. It certainly doesn't feel or look like
a regular studio and we believe this is its main selling point. In short, it's a giant blank canvass
to be designed exactly how you (and the band) want.
The Pool consists of one large room, and when we say large we mean huge! The height of the room is a massive six metres and the floor space a vast eighty square metres. The walls are stone clad on three sides with a plasterboard finish on the fourth. The ceiling is pitched creating some wonderful acoustics, making it ideal for ambient microphones. Constructed with solid tiles, the roof space is pierced by two large skylights allowing daylight to pour in.
The Pool's giant, versatile space allows you to choose how to use it. You might wish to bring in your
own equipment and setup a virtual control room. Alternatively, you might prefer to use the equipment
that's already there - it's all owned by producer Ben Hillier who helped create the environment.
Another option is to use the room as an additional live space in tandem with our state of the art Neve VR Room or delightful programming room, The Toyshop. As you can see, the choices are endless, enabling you to get the very best out of the musicians, whatever the setup or requirements.
Bands can record without headphones, au naturel, helping to catch the dynamics of what makes a band a band. With the enormous headroom, drums sound enormous and almost anything recorded in the space will
benefit from the sheer size. There are precious few recording environments in London to compare.
If you choose to use The Pool with our Neve VR Room you can gain all the
benefits of our top-end tracking and mix facility - such as the extensive outboard selection and
state-of-the-art Pro Tools HD rig. Alternatively, if you are on a budget, why not use it with our
programming room (and The Chemical Brother's spiritual home) 'The Toyshop'. Also complete with a Pro
Tools HD rig, this control room and creative space would be wonderfully enhanced with the addition of
this giant live room.
The Pool is adjacent to our Neve VR Room in our Leroy Street complex and is accessed from our main reception. As you enter the studio you'll see a homemade control room area on your immediate left. The walls in this area have been covered with foam panels and the floor is carpeted giving this end of The Pool enough tightness to assist the monitoring.
The rest of the space is yours to use as you wish... There is a homemade drum riser which has a scaffolding surround,
allowing you to add a 'ceiling' to reduce the acoustics if you wish to have a tighter drum sound. It is not pretty,
it is not clever, but it is absolutely brilliant.
In addition to all this creativity and ultimate flexibility, clients can exploit all the benefits that our Neve and Toyshop clients have come to expect. They can relax between sessions in our glorious recreation room, complete with pool table, table football, Sky TV and a Sony Playstation. In addition to the rec area and lounge-cum-kitchen all our clients also get to enjoy wireless broadband access. In short, everything you need for the complete studio experience.