Pathway Studios

From PoliceWiki


Pathway Studios
former Pathway Studios in March 2013, now a private apartment - photo by Miquel
Location: STREET ADDRESS/UK
Years in operation: XXXX - XXXX

Pathway Studios was a small 8-track recording studio in the north of London.

In September 1976 Last Exit recorded a few demos at Pathway Studios.

On 1977-02-12 The Police went to Pathway Studios to record their very first songs Fall Out and Nothing Achieving.

On 1977-08-10 The Police returned to the studio to record two songs with (drunk) producer John Cale - with both guitarists Andy Summers and Henry Padovani. They recorded an early version of Dead End Job (still unreleased) plus two takes of Visions Of The Night (an updated combination of those two versions was later used as a b-side on the Walking On The Moon 7").

On 1978-02-12 Stewart Copeland produced two songs for The Moors Murderers (and probably played drums on them, too).

Other artists who recorded there were The Damned, Elvis Costello and other Stiff artists.

History

In 2005 guitarist Tim Crowther remembers this about Pathway Studios (see links):

"The studio closed a few years ago. I am a guitarist and I recorded three albums there in the early 1990s, one with my power trio Groon, the others with Geoff Serle and King Crimson violinist David Cross. The studio was owned by Mike Finesilver and the engineers we used were Justin Underhill and Jim Coustance. It was a very low key place, a bit cold and damp with a unique sweet musty smell that clung to your clothes and equipment for days afterwards. The studio was very small, about 8 x 8 metres with a 2 x 2m control booth in the corner and an upright piano next to it. You could just squeeze three people into the control booth! The tape deck was a Brennell 1 inch 8 track. The monitors and desk were custom made, and they had a pair of Auratones as well, fed from Quad power amps. The desk was quite small, pushed hard against the front wall with the custom monitors hung above and the Auratones on the meter bridge. Outboard was very basic: a Bel delay line, an Alesis digital reverb and Drawmer gates, but they had a nice plate reverb in a cupboard in the office upstairs. I can't recall all the mics but they were the industry standard stuff. We got big warm sounding mixes and despite the cramped conditions the mixing process seemed effortless compared to the difficult digital learning curve I have been on in the last two years."

Bazza built the small desk for Mike Finesilver and Peter Ker back in 1974 or 1975. There wasn't much space in the contol room. The desk was 16-input with transformer coupled mic amps designed by David Robinson and descibed in his series in Studio Sound Magazine. EQ was originally from the same source and was based on an LCR network and used dicrete transistors. These were later replaced by a more controllable IC based design.


Some technical information by Bazza:

"The machines used were a Brennell 1inch 8-track and a couple of (heavily modified) Revox .25inch stereo recorders. We later got an Otari 8-track which was used as the main recorder with the Brennell kept for laying-off sub-mixes. This was a primative way of getting more tracks. Recording levels were (if I remember correctly) 4dB above the Ampex reccommended operating level of 185nW/m and the tapes were usually Scotch 256 for both 1inch and .25inch machines (older recording would have been on 206 tape). Sometimes we used Ampex 456 and sometimes (usually "demos", or when the artist was really strapped for cash) second-hand reels of God-knows-what !"

Recording history

The following Police and related albums or songs were recorded at this studio:

Album (or song) title Artist or band Producer Release year
Fall Out/Nothing Achieving The Police Stewart Copeland and Bazza 1977
Dead End Job/Visions Of The Night The Police John Cale 1979 (Visions re-mix)
Free Hindley/The Ten Commandments The Moors Murderers Stewart Copeland no official release

See also

This section needs more information.

External links

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-end/50569-pathway-studios-london.html

References

sources: internet, books, personal information