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!
Project Runway's score records at Dubway NYC
In an update to our previous post about Nick Rastegar’s work for Project Runway, we now have an excerpt of the episode to share. Take a listen to Rastegar’s beautiful piece (and some great dresses) in the clip above.
You can read more about the session below, along with a photo from recording!
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.
Dubway West records Avril Lavigne for Fallon
24/7 Productions and Dubway West have teamed up again, this time to produce and record pop-punk royalty Avril Lavigne with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker in an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The band performed recent single “Bite Me” live to a group of cameras and the Dubway West sound team with 24/7 Productions running all other elements of the production.
Engineering was lead by Luke Gerard Webb, assisted by Maja Sazdic. Read more about our recent work with 24/7 Productions here, and check out the finished product above!
Static & Ben El live at El Ray Theatre
Static & Ben El played LA’s El Rey Theatre a few weeks back with sound from Dubway West engineers Eric McCann, Maja Sazdic, and Patrick Pak, who were behind the boards for the run of show. The El Rey is known for it’s Art Deco façade, pictured at left with the concert billing on the marquee.
The space is booked by Goldenvoice, who worked with event production company 24/7 Productions–a client of the Dubway West team–to put on the show.
We recently teamed up again with 24/7 Productions for Avril Lavigne’s appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, which you can read about here.
Producer Mark Siegal, at Dubway West
Jonas Jalhay leaned over Dubway West’s beautifully restored large-format Audient console.
Award winning record producer Mark Siegal recently brought a band of talented musicians through our LA outpost, Dubway West, to track instrumentals and overdubs for an upcoming project from singer/songwriter Taylor Grey. Dubway’s Jonas Jalhay engineered the recording, assisted by engineer Maja Sazdic.
Siegal has produced records for artists like MENNA, Liddy Clark (at Dubway West as well!), Jackie Castro, and many more. Taylor Grey has worked with Siegal previously, and the two felt at home in each other’s work, which always feels great to be a part of in the studio.
Check out Grey’s latest single below, and stay tuned for more on the horizon!
Dubway West records production audio for Sephora
Makeup giant Sephora recently released an involved piece of advertising featuring a slate of talented musicians & performers, and Dubway West was proud to be on-set to record the production audio. Engineering was headed by Luke Gerard Webb, with Maja Sazdic assisting.
Performances featured in the shoot included Jai'len Josey doing "She Got It", Symphani Soto performing "Energy", Kari Faux’s "Color Theory", and Leven Kali with "Smile". Check it out above, and see some behind-the-scenes shots below.
Charley Shealy mixes Rico Anderson in the Mezzanine
Shealy and Anderson deep in the mix.
Washington D.C / DMV musician, DJ, and composer Rico Anderson set up in our flagship Mezzanine Suite last month with engineer Charley Shealy to mix a selection of new tracks. Shealy and Anderson made judicious use of the Mezzanine’s banks of hardware outboard gear, as well as one of our studio’s main attractions: the SSL 4064 G+ mixing console at the center of our control room, and the onboard SSL G Bus Compressor that’s glued countless classic records together since the ‘80s (and more platinum records than any other console in history, if you believe SSL themselves!).
Check out a bit more about Anderson’s work, or give us a call to book the Mezzanine for a mixing session!
Dubway transfers unreleased sounds from the legendary SOB's
Sounds of Brazil (aka SOB’s), the celebrated Hudson Square venue that has long been a storied part of the history of hip-hop (among other genres and styles), has been at Dubway’s Manhattan studios recently to transfer tapes of recordings made at the venue and with associated artists. Dubway engineer Marc Frongillo assisted SOB’s rep Le’Roy Benros in carefully converting the tapes to digital files for safekeeping, future release, or any other purpose. The stash included unreleased music from many of SOB’s star performers, including artists like Kanye West.
Lead engineer Nathaniel Reichman's work nominated for a GRAMMY
Lead Dubway engineer and all-around expert Nathaniel Reichman has been nominated, along with the musicians and crew, for a 2022 Grammy Award® for the John Luther Adams album Lines Made By Walking. Reichman served as the producer and recording engineer for the album, which is performed by the JACK Quartet.
Lines Made By Walking is up for an award in the “Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance” category–a fairly recent and exciting category that, over the years, has included the likes of Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, eighth blackbird, Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) and Laurie Anderson–and is John Luther Adams’ first nomination in the category. The album is released through Adam’s regular label, Cold Blue Music.
Congratulations to all the players and crew, and best of luck with the Grammy voters!
You can find the album at the linked page to the label’s Bandcamp page, above, or from many online and physical retailers.
Jonathan Reid Gealt announces "Archetype" release date, presale
Jonathan Reid Gealt’s newest album, ARCHETYPE, is nearly out! The album has been a labor of love from Gealt and his team, and has included tons of collaborations between Dubway and Dubway West; the artist and his core team including Joseph Joubert, Stephen Oremus, and Brian Usifer; and the album’s star studded roster of guest vocalists. From the video alone, we can see the vocal talent includes Mackenzie Thomas, Amber Iman, Daniel J. Watts, Brooke Simpson, Kim Cruse, Anilee List, Lilli Cooper, David Simmons Jr., Sophia James, India Carney, Mario Jose, Ashley Jayy, and Sasha Allen.
Much of Dubway’s engineering staff contributed to parts of the project including engineers Keenan DuBois, Zach Grappone, Pascal McGilvray-Guard, and Sydney Fuqua.
Presale begins this Friday, 11/12, with the full release coming on 12/3. A quarter of the album’s proceeds will be donated as a fundraiser for the NAACP.