 The Premises Studios – Studio A Control Room | |
 | |
| Location | Haggerston, London, England |
|---|---|
| Type | Recording studio |
| Opened | 1986 |
| Website | |
| premisesstudios | |
The Premises Studios is a music studio complex based near Haggerston in Hackney, London. The studio complex contains 10 commercial rehearsal studio spaces, one acoustic recording studio, one mixing studio, and various private long-let rooms and office spaces.
Originally housed across two Victorian terrace houses at 201–203 Hackney Road, London, the studios were opened in 1986 by two local jazz musicians, Dill Katz and Colin Dudman, as a cost-effective alternative to London's more established music studios. [1]
The buildings themselves are said to have a somewhat illicit history, prior to the music studios taking residence, with one building "reputed to be a rendezvous for illicit trysts between Lord Hamilton and Lady Hamilton" [2] and another of the terraces said to have been a club run by notorious East End gangsters the Kray brothers. [2]
After a difficult financial period the studios were forced to declare insolvency in 1996 and the business was bought by current owner and CEO, Viv Broughton. Broughton is a published author and gospel music historian [3] (he had a gospel column in The Voice , [4] which newspaper he helped to launch) [5] and was one of the early members of The Pretty Things. [6] [7]
At this time The Premises Music Education Programme [8] was established as a music-based charity, which ran a New Deal work programme and still provides workshops and courses throughout the year, often in partnership with like-minded non-for-profit organisations. [9] [10]
In 1998 the charity purchased the freehold of neighbouring properties and secured the future of the studios in their current location at 205–209 Hackney Road, although the original 201–203 Hackney Road studios have remained within the greater complex as long let studio spaces. Upon expansion the original buildings were demolished to make way for a bespoke new building with studios and offices over three floors. In May 2010, the arrangement between The Premises Studios Ltd and Full Frequency Ltd, the lease holders for 201–203 buildings, was dissolved. The Premises Studios business operates only in 205–209 Hackney Road.
In 2007, The Premises Studios finished work on a large acoustic recording space. This was the first solar-powered recording studio in the United Kingdom and believed to be the first in Europe. [11] [12]
In 2010 Hackney Council controversially ordered the removal a landmark piece of street art from the wall of The Premises, a 12-foot rabbit painted the previous year by graffiti artist ROA, with the studio's consent. [13] [14] [15] Following a campaign, [16] [17] the council reviewed the case and "decided not to take action because the rabbit had been in situ for some time and had not provoked complaints". [18] [19]
On 7 June 2007, lead singer of Razorlight, Johnny Borrell recorded a song for Friends of the Earth as part of the Big Ask Campaign in the new solar-powered studio. [20] The Big Ask was a widely publicised political campaign designed to lobby government to introduce a climate change law which committed the UK to cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by at least three per cent every year. [21]
Later in 2007, The Premises joined Friends of the Earth and various lobbying bodies to further establish the 10:10 movement, a business group advocating the cut of carbon emissions by 10% by 2010. [22]
In April 2008, The Premises Studios once again joined Friends of the Earth and the Renewable Energy Association to continue to lobby Government, calling for a financial reward for homes and businesses that generate their own clean renewable energy. The Energy Bill was amended in part as a result of this campaign, which had the support of recording artist Lily Allen. [23] [11]
On 5 October 2010, The Premises received the Audio Pro International Award for Most Original Studio Initiative for its solar-powered recording studio.
In June 2011, The Premises won the Best Green Business Award at the annual MusicWeek Awards. [24] This was the first time the award featured at the Music Week Awards.
The studios have been used by musicians such as Nina Simone, Arctic Monkeys, Dave Brubeck, Billy Cobham, Nick Cave, Amy Winehouse, Jamie Cullum, Al Green, Franz Ferdinand, Charlotte Church, Hot Chip, Babyshambles, Simian Mobile Disco, Oysterband, Taj Mahal, The Magic Numbers, The Infadels, Peaches, Klaxons, London Community Gospel Choir, Lady Sovereign, and many more touring and recording artists. [25]
The Premises Café is the studios' café restaurant, placed at the front of the complex in Hackney, and is also open to the general public.
In the early days of the studios being based at 201–203 Hackney Road, a mixture of studio staff and musicians staffed the café. Broughton said of this: "Musicians understand musicians. Musicians aren’t so good at running the café side of things – in fact, when I let them do it they always made a loss – but it makes complete sense for the studios." [26] The Café business is now owned and operated as a family business, and services the studios as well as the general public.
In April 2007, The Premises Café was awarded Best Turkish Restaurant in the Evening Standard ′s annual restaurant competition. On 24 May 2009, it was featured in The Guardian newspaper's food feature "50 coolest places to eat". [27]
The walls of the café are lined with signed photographs of famous studio clients. [28]
| Authority control databases: Geographic |
|---|
Stoke Newington is an area occupying the northwest part of the London Borough of Hackney, England. The area is five miles northeast of Charing Cross. The Manor of Stoke Newington gave its name to Stoke Newington the ancient parish.
Victoria Park is a park in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, England.
Jonathan Edward Borrell is an English guitarist and singer, currently the frontman of the rock band Razorlight.
De Beauvoir Town is a neighbourhood in east London and is in the London Borough of Hackney, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the City of London. The area was a part of Hackney, the Ancient Parish and subsequent Metropolitan Borough that was incorporated into the larger modern borough. It is sometimes described as a part of Dalston, which is in turn also a part of the former parish and borough of Hackney.
Hackney South and Shoreditch is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Meg Hillier of Labour Co-op.
Hackney Wick is a neighbourhood in East London, England. The area forms the south-eastern part of the district of Hackney, and also of the wider London Borough of Hackney. Adjacent areas of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets are sometimes also described as being part of Hackney Wick. The area lies 4.2 miles (6.8 km) northeast of Charing Cross.
The London Community Gospel Choir is Britain's first renowned contemporary "performance touring, inspirational gospel choir band", fusing gospel with multi-genres of music, including pop, soul, jazz, R&B, and classical. It was founded in 1982 and has performed with people including Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Gorillaz, and Kylie Minogue.
David Thomas Broughton is an English folk/avant-garde singer and guitarist. Born in Otley, West Yorkshire, he creates the sound of a large ensemble by sampling himself singing, playing acoustic guitar, and making an assortment of other sounds through a Boss loop pedal. He also uses various non-traditional musical instruments to augment his songs, including radios, personal attack alarms and televisions, and occasionally incorporates a use of natural field recordings into his music. He is also known for his love of spontaneity and musical improvisation, recording albums in one take and beginning live performances with no clear plan in mind. He includes self-conscious, ironic dance moves and off-mic singing in his live performances.
Denmark Street is a street on the edge of London's West End running from Charing Cross Road to St Giles High Street. It is near St Giles in the Fields Church and Tottenham Court Road station. The street was developed in the late 17th century and named after Prince George of Denmark. Since the 1950s it has been associated with British popular music, first via publishers and later by recording studios and music shops. A blue plaque was unveiled in 2014 commemorating the street's importance to the music industry.
"Graffiti My Soul" is a song by British-Irish all-female pop group Girls Aloud, taken from their second studio album What Will the Neighbours Say? (2004). Written and produced by Brian Higgins and his production team Xenomania, the track was originally written for Britney Spears. "Graffiti My Soul" includes a sample of Peplab's "It's Not the Drug."
Slipway Fires is the third album by English indie rock band Razorlight. It was released on 3 November 2008.
Brighton Electric is a music studio complex in Brighton, UK, founded in 2000.
Darren Cullen is a London-based professional graffiti artist who is commonly known by the tag name SER. Cullen emerged as an artist from the British graffiti art scene in the early 1980s.
Muyiwa Olarewaju is a British Gospel singer and songwriter who mixes traditional gospel music with elements of world music, soul, R&B and pop. He is also an experienced performer, broadcaster and presenter. In 2009 he became the first-ever international act to perform on America's popular entertainment channel, BET, for the prestigious annual Celebration of Gospel show. He has presented the Turning Point programme to an estimated global audience of 70 million. With his group Riversongz, he sold out Indigo2 at the O2 in London, the first gospel act to do so, and he has played at the largest gospel music event in the world, The Experience, attracting a 500,000 strong audience.
ROA is a graffiti and street artist from Ghent, Belgium. He has created works on the streets of cities across Europe, the United States, Australia, Asia, New Zealand and Africa. ROA generally paints wild or urban animals and birds that are native to the area being painted. ROA usually uses a minimal color palette, such as black and white, but also creates works using vibrant colours depicting the flesh or internal systems within the animals and birds.
"ROA treats each surface he paints like a space to investigate, play with, and fit his creatures into. The technical perfection of his painting belies an underlying resourcefulness with simple tools,” “The animals are matched to their location, with rats in New York City and elephants in Bangkok. There are dark and funny messages, the beauty of both life and death, universal metaphors, inside jokes, and occasional violence, but always in ways that honor the animals and the spaces where they are painted."
Arthur William Phoenix Young Jeffes is an English composer, musician, and arctic explorer. He is the frontman of the musical group Penguin Cafe, a group he formed in 2007 to play the music of his father's band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He is one half of the band Sundog.
Dean Street Studios is a commercial recording studio located at 59 Dean Street, Soho, London, England.
Grand Union Orchestra, also known as The Grand Union, is a multicultural world jazz ensemble based in London. It has been performing, touring and recording large-scale shows for over 30 years and is well known for its educational work.
Viv Broughton is a British studio owner, music entrepreneur and writer, who is CEO of The Premises Studios, described by London Jazz News as "a vitally important and popular London recording and rehearsal venue". A one-time early member of rock group The Pretty Things, Broughton went on to help launch The Voice newspaper in 1982, as well as being a gospel historian, author of the Channel 4 book Too Close to Heaven: The Illustrated History of Gospel Music (1996).
