With an average age of 70, Tetbury, where Modern World Studio is based, is not the place to go to if you are looking to party and rub elbows with industry reps. Nick Cowan, the owner of Modern World Studio, laughs: “We have these Scottish metal bands coming to town for the studio and they ask us where all the chicks are, and we have to say: ‘There aren’t any, it’s Tetbury’.”

Despite the absence of nightclubs and rock venues, Cowan assures us that the studio is a great place to get bands to focus on their record. This is also one of the reasons why producer Greg Haver (Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, Lost Prophets and Bullet For My Valentine) has taken residence in the studio for almost three years.

Modern World was not started as a commercial venture, rather a place for Cowan to work on his own music and film scoring. After 20 years of living a hectic London life, Cowan gave it all up and began building his ultimate studio in the heart of Tetbury’s countryside. Fronted by an SSL Duality console, prime outboard from API, Chandler, Emperical Labs, Thermionic Culture and Lexicon and an Exigy 5.1 surround monitoring system with Quested S7 nearfield, Cowan worked with White Mark to develop a high-end project studio that soon took on a life of its own. He comments: “It began as a shitty room with holes in the roof. We stripped it back to a shell and White Mark took care of the live and control rooms.
“We really wanted to use the height of the industrial building. You go to a lot of London studios and you are in the basement with no windows and restricted head height, which I always find weird because you just don’t feel like you want to be there.

“I wanted to finally have a go at recording some of my own stuff and record film scores and advert jingles – that was the original logic behind it. In the planning stages, White Mark asked if I was every going to rent it out commercially, and I said ‘absolutely no way’. The guys at the firm explained that if I ever was going to make it a commercial space that I should start thinking about it then, rather than in two years’ time, and consider things like health and safety guidelines and installing a wheelchair ramp.”

making a mark
White Mark designed the studio’s main live room as 460 sq ft of open plan recording space. The room’s large size, oak flooring, oak diffusers (16 in total), and fabric walls are complemented by natural daylight from windows and overhead skylights. Acoustic screens are also provided for separation during live recordings. It includes a full eight-channel Aviom mixing system for headphone balance, with recording and foldback via Quested S8s. Cowan comments: “The room sounds great and we also have all sorts of mood lighting, like LEDS in the diffusers that are nice little White Mark touches.

“When I started to think about using it as a commercial space, I also changed my mind about the desk I wanted. Originally I had a SSL AWS 900 coming, which was only 24 tracks, but I thought that a 48-track desk would cover all the bases if it was a commercial studio and could also gave me a lot of flexibility with my own work.

“Mike Banks of SSL sold me the desk and said that I should call in a few producers to test it to get some feedback and Haver was one of them. From him, the client base just kept growing and to this day, three years later, I still haven’t been in my own studio. It is an accidental recording studio.”

Modern World maintains an exclusive 24-hour locked policy for the bands. It also features an edit suite with a Pro Tools HD system, a collection of vintage and high-end guitars, amps that would make any musician fall to their knees and a lounge with a widescreen TV, kitchen and a pinball machine.

Cowan’s space seems the perfect model for a modern studio: self owned, built from the ground up and just big enough to fit a live band and orchestra without being too big or expensive, thus fitting in with the budgets of self-financed bands and independent labels. As such, the studio is fully booked throughout the year. Despite its great success Cowan is leery of getting too big. He states: “Six months ago I would have said that I wanted to expand. If I could do anything here it would be to open an expanded edit suite, something that complements the studio. I don’t want bands to lose that priceless exclusivity.

“I wouldn’t buy the building next door and spend another three quarters of a million quid building another studio, because on paper it doesn’t add up. I built this studio for myself and it has become profitable, which is great, but when I look at other studios, especially those in the heart of London, I can’t figure out how they are turning a profit – and the answer has to be that they aren’t. This building cost £100,000. The guys in London who don’t own the freehold are paying £30,000 to £40,000 a year on rent alone. I don’t know how they make it work, because unless you have orchestras or are really high-end it must be really hard to keep the rooms full every month.

“We get 90 per cent unsigned bands here, which means it is their money and they want to work hard and use the time. Haver drives them hard and they leave with an amazing product. We have a day rate of £500 with free accommodation. You can leave at midnight and get back in here at nine am and it is still the same price.

“Client attention to detail is my main priority. I really want to look after the client, because I think that’s really what’s been missing from this industry.”

But don’t just take the owner’s word for it
Producer Greg Haver and engineer Clint Murphy have been using Modern World for three years as a home away from home. After travelling all over the globe using studios in New Zealand, Ireland and Latvia, the pair found Modern World and have booked it out in monthly blocks ever since.

“When the studio I regularly used in Cardiff was bought by the Manic Street Preachers, it became private and I could only work around the band’s sessions,” Haver says. “We used to spend four months in the UK and then four in New Zealand. The idea of being based somewhere so we could see our wives seemed like a good idea and it is a great place to work.

“I love the desk and the monitoring. We get a good price and in return we bring in a huge amount of business and practically live here. Due to the amount of work we bring to the studio, Cowan was prepared to make some changes for us and acquire some gear that we wanted to use. It is a two-way street: Modern World Studio gets a large amount of work and we get a studio that is comfortable to work in.”

Murphy explains: “Bands don’t seem to mind travelling here because it is only an hour from London and lots of them come over from New Zealand because the conversion rate is in their favour. At the moment, the pound is so much weaker than everything else. Modern World throws in accommodation as part of the studio price, so having a band over with free accommodation for a four-week session is a big savings.
 
“When we first started coming here and it was new, there were a lot of new products. We soon got used to the rooms. And eventually Cowan started buying some gear that we were after too.

“The main room is a very dry and dead drum sound, which is good for an AC/DC drum sound. We suggested using the studio’s gym because it is quite splashy, and it actually sounds really cool. And now we get some of the best drum sounds
in there.

“What really brought me here was the desk and the monitoring. Especially for mixing – the SSL Duality is great to work on because you have the digital control surface combined with the analog side as well. I still mix the old way on the desk, so it is nice to be hands on.

getting to know you
“The more I get to know the SSL,” Murphy continues, “the more I have enjoyed tracking on it. I grew up as a Neve man and a fan of that classic punchy sound, but the SSL has a variable harmonic function that you can wind in on the second or third order harmonics to get a valve transistor sound, and it actually makes quite a difference. I usually record strings on Neves, but I have really liked recording them on the Duality and using the third harmonic function.”

“It has almost become our home studio, albeit a very expensive one,” Haver explains. “The Duality is designed really well and is compact. I always worked a lot on E and G series and this board is similar – the monitor section is a digital interface, but the channel strips are essentially the same.

“These days records have to be financially transparent. You shouldn’t be able to listen to a recording and be able to figure out how much is cost to make. Every record has got to sound like it took a million bucks to make it. You can’t say that you just didn’t have enough money – that is not an excuse. It is our job as a producer and engineer to make the record sound as good as possibly can, so you find the facilities to do that.

“Why would we want to be in our bedrooms at home doing that? We have seen a lot of producers set up a studio in their homes to try and save money and the quality of their work suffers. We spend nearly every single day of our lives in here. The other good thing is that bands like being upstairs and it keeps them out of my hair.”

Murphy laughs: “Although sometimes it can be quite hard to get the bands into the control room, because they are in the middle of their Halo game or Guitar Hero.”

Haver continues: “I do get a bit down on them when they are playing Guitar Hero rather than learning their guitar parts. They will be whizzing through the game and then they come down here and they don’t know their parts, and it’s like, ‘you have just been playing Guitar Hero for ten hours’.

“We really love being at Modern World Studio – it is a great facility. It has all worked out well for everybody. We have this little Kiwi enclave in Tetbury and it is all down to Cowan building the studio here – we have lowered the average age of Tetbury by about ten years.”
www.modernworldstudios.com