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34<br />
JONATHAN MILLER dons his<br />
wellies <strong>for</strong> a trip out into the<br />
Suffolk countryside to pay a<br />
visit to Monkey Puzzle House,<br />
a keenly priced residential<br />
recording studio of much merit.<br />
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Puzzle House is a new, purpose-built<br />
residential recording studio. We have created<br />
a studio that encapsulates all that is – or was<br />
���onkey<br />
– good about the classic studios, ironed out<br />
their faults using modern means, and added essential<br />
new technologies, thereby creating an af<strong>for</strong>dable, cuttingedge<br />
facility.’ That's what the website says, anyway. Of<br />
special interest is the studio’s very reasonable quoted<br />
daily hire rate of £250 (including an engineer) – especially<br />
when one sees what gear one gets access to within its<br />
scenic surroundings.<br />
Long And Winding Road<br />
Situated on a rural crossroads on the outskirts of the<br />
quaint Suffolk village of Woolpit, an initially unassuming<br />
Victorian flint-fronted cottage fronts an adjoining<br />
dark wood-clad barn that is also typical of the area’s<br />
architectural vernacular – the Monkey Puzzle House<br />
residential studio itself.<br />
Monkey Puzzle House is also home to studio owner<br />
Rupert Matthews, an affable and relatively young<br />
individual who clearly lives and breathes his craft, having<br />
bravely put his money where his heart is.<br />
Step through a side entrance from a gravelled<br />
courtyard and one immediately finds oneself in an<br />
expansive country-style kitchen – the hub of Monkey<br />
Puzzle House, with doors leading directly to the beautiful<br />
control room centred around a recently installed Solid<br />
State Logic AWS 900+ Analogue Workstation System and<br />
attached to an eye-catching and spacious live room.<br />
Mathews starts here: “The last studio I built – as part<br />
of a multimedia business in a leased farm property down<br />
in Surrey – had doors that went from the control room<br />
through into the live room, which I never really liked.<br />
Another studio I worked in... was<br />
the same, as was Ridge Farm,<br />
so, here, to draw people out of<br />
the control room, the process<br />
of walking into the live room<br />
gets people trapped in the<br />
kitchen; they’re still involved in<br />
what’s going on, or feel they’re<br />
listening com<strong>for</strong>tably, but it<br />
certainly makes the control<br />
room space feel a lot bigger <strong>for</strong><br />
a room that’s not actually huge,<br />
even though it’s a com<strong>for</strong>table<br />
room to have a bunch of people<br />
hanging around in. Besides, not<br />
AUDIO MEDIA MAY <strong>2009</strong><br />
having the stereotypical sofa behind the desk means<br />
there’s not always someone behind you, so you don’t<br />
have to turn around every few seconds to hear what<br />
they’re saying.<br />
"By putting the sofa in front of the desk you can kind<br />
of see what they’re saying without having to change<br />
what you’re doing too much. So the kitchen really helps<br />
– something I haven’t seen anywhere else; it just seemed<br />
the right thing to do, so I went with it.”<br />
Just Have A Little Patience<br />
Matthews’ interest in recording dates back to his Sussexbased<br />
childhood: “…through having played in bands,<br />
and being the person that always brought along the<br />
tape deck and Dictaphone to the session, putting it in<br />
the corner, and working out that hiding it under blankets<br />
and things somehow made it sound better!”<br />
Such experimentation soon had Matthews hooked,<br />
quickly moving onwards and upwards in the recording<br />
world, courtesy of an unspecified two-track Ferrograph<br />
tape machine, be<strong>for</strong>e settling on an audio-cassette-based<br />
four-track upon which he started recording local bands:<br />
“That was going pretty well; then, at the beginning of the<br />
’90s, I borrowed some money from my folks and bought<br />
an ADAT, eight microphones, and a tiny little mixer – not<br />
an incredible choice of equipment, but I started charging<br />
people <strong>for</strong> a recording.”<br />
Matthews’ much-needed break came soon after:<br />
"When I was at college – I would have been 16 at the<br />
time – I was recording a band on my own equipment,<br />
doing Led Zeppelin covers, which I was really excited<br />
about, just on the basis of them being a bloody great<br />
band who had always recorded well. I was struggling a bit<br />
with the drums, trying to make them sound really good.<br />
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