When I interviewed Stuart Hallerman of Avast! Recording a few months ago, he told me that a young band that was family friends of producer Phil Ek had just been in the studio and left a giant EMT 140 plate reverb. That band turned out to be Fleet Foxes, which has recently received four stars from Rolling Stone and hailed by critics as this generation’s answer to Crosby, Stills & Nash, received a nine out of ten stars from Pitchfork.com and reached number one on the CMJ Radio chart.

Whether it is the bands, the producer or the studio that is responsible for the many successful albums that have been made at Avast, the reputation of the studio certainly precedes itself. Hallerman opened the studio in Seattle in the spring of 1990 while working as Soundgarden’s FOH engineer. Since building the first studio it has hosted major indie trend setters like Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Cat Power, the list goes on. Avast! has also become the favourite area studio for Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Les Savy Fav, Mudhoney), John Goodmanson (Hot Hot Heat, Blondie, Unwound, Sleater Kinney and Wu Tang Clan)and a considerable number of others.

Hallerman believes that one of the reasons for the studio’s success is his aim to not make everything sound ‘squeaky’ clean. He explains: “When I first started the studio if you were in a rock band going into a Seattle studio dressed scrappy looking like you were in a bar band you would get the assistant engineer or and intern to record your session. Those guys would get nervous and make a ‘perfect’ sounding album. They would minimise distortion, minimise the bleed and put everyone in headphones; basically do all the wrong things and the band came out with a clean recording that they didn’t like. Rock music is art, not cookie-cutter commercial stuff. It has more feeling and heart to it.”

He also consulted with Soundgarden to devise the best atmosphere for the studio. “I was on the road with Soundgarden while I was shopping around for a space,” Hallerman notes. “They really put the reins on me and told me to make the studio kind of cheap, really comfortable and I knew to let the bands hang out and record all day rather than kicking them out for an advertising client. As a result, the Avast! aesthetic is a super comfortable space that people describe as the best rehearsal space they have ever been in.”

Finding the right building was another task altogether. “I was hung up on 100 times when I was looking for a studio, after explaining to landlords that it was going to be a rock n roll recording studio,” Hallerman explains. “This was during the height of the Seattle grunge era, and Nirvana, Tad and Mudhoney had already recorded albums. I was starting to think that if I didn’t open up the studio by the end of 1989 I was going to miss the entire Seattle scene.”

After the arduous search for the right space, Hallerman bought a modest amount of recording equipment, developed a studio that people could relate to and his calendar quickly began to fill up. He was able to record many bands during the grunge era and stay busy despite its decline by recording bands in the burgeoning indie rock scene.

The work was so steady that he and producer John Goodmanson opened up a smaller studio, whose schedule also filled up instantly.

Things were very busy for Avast! until the advent of Pro Tools. After hearing feedback from engineers stating that early versions of Pro Tools were “kind of shitty”, Hallerman stuck to using analog tape until it became apparent that he had to make the change over. “I was a late-comer to Pro Tools. It was not cheap and there was no way I was going to spend 15 to 20 thousand on something that sounded worse than what I already had. It got to the point that my calendar was empty and the phone was ringing with people asking if I had Pro Tools. I had to turn away a lot of people until I finally broke down and bought it. The work began coming back in, although it still took a long time for tape to dwindle away.”

While he still prefers tape, he is happy with the modern Pro Tools HD systems, but still suggests that bands mixdown to half-inch tape. “I’m happy with the sound,” he admits. “And if you have really great sounds going into it, it barely puts a hurt on it. Maybe even less so than analog, although they both colour the sound a little bit. Pro Tools still changes  the performances and the sounds you record to it. One of the dangers that still exists with any DAW is that you never say no to overdubs and decisions don’t get made because the band always wants to wait until you are mixing to decide which tracks to use. Then it comes time to mix and you have a morass of stuff.

“It also leads to the situation where a band member will do a performance and miss something or hit a bad note, they will put down their instrument and expect the engineer to fix it with cutting and pasting, rather than going for inspiration or playing it right. When you put the same people in front of a tape deck and they have to get it right or know where they are going with the song, it is artistically different.”

With nearly two decades of experience under his belt, Hallerman has collected a huge range of great analog gear, including LA2As, dbx 160s distressors and large plate reverbs. Studio A at Avast! has a 36-foot by 34-foot live room and a 19-foot by 26-foot control room. A 36-channel Trident A-Range console, Studer A827 two-inch, 24-track recorder, and a Pro Tools HD2 system are also in place for digital and analog recording, with an extensive array of vintage and modern outboard mic preamps and processors. It can take up to 30 players with isolation areas for soloists and vocals.

Studio B has a 22-foot by 32-foot live room with wooden floors and two isolation booths. A Trident TSM console and Pro Tools HD2 system lives in the control room along with an Ampex MM1200 two-inch, 16-track recorder and an Ampex half-inch, two-track deck. Studio B is the more affordable of the studios and can be used for tracking, overdubbing, editing, or mixing. The API Legacy Console, analog gear, stacks of 1176s and a fully loaded Pro Tools system originally located in Avast! Classic was moved into the same building as Studios A and B.

Hallerman credits the API Legacy as the reason for the great high-end sheen that bands like Band of Horses, The Shins and Fleet Foxes have got at the studio. He explains: “Both Goodmanson and Ek would boost up really nice parts of the high end and I asked Goodmanson how to get that clarity and brightness. He told me just to turn to up the high end up a lot. I looked at the board, and, sure enough, the high end was turned up on everything and it works. The high end from the board doesn’t hurt your ears.

“Phil Ek really knows how to sculpt the high part of the frequency range beautifully. I can’t mix as brightly as he does. My ears tell me that things should be darker than that. He has eagle ears and wants things to sound good. He also helps me maintain the studio by pointing out all the broken gear,” Hallerman laughs.

The reverb heavy vocals found on recordings from Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes is another signature sound of Avast! and Hallerman attributes it to the EMT 140 plate reverb left by Fleet Foxes, combined with the studio’s Lexicon 480 and Klark Teknik DN780.

The legacy of Avast! Recording has spanned across many years
and successfully influenced several waves of the music business. It is now known as one of the premier studios in the US for indie rock bands, big and small.

With carefully chosen gear and a mandate to keep things rock n roll, Hallerman and the associated engineers and producers at Avast! aim to infuse a pulse into every song tracked or mixed at the studio.
www.avastrecording.com