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Early Doors<br />
In reality, commercial recording studios are<br />
never wholly finished, but Matthews could be<br />
<strong>for</strong>given <strong>for</strong> wanting to get going. All it took<br />
was a little outside intervention – mixing <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
Fame Academy winner David Sneddon at the end<br />
of 2006, as it happened. “I was in the hardware<br />
department of Jewsons when they called,” notes<br />
a still smiling Matthews. “The live room was still<br />
a carcass at that stage, and they brought their<br />
own Pro Tools rig, because we didn’t have one<br />
at the time, but that’s what made me go and get<br />
the Genelec 1038Bs when I did – quite prematurely.<br />
They did a white noise test that was specifically<br />
calibrated <strong>for</strong> the Genelecs, and we had an<br />
unprecedented response <strong>for</strong> the monitoring.<br />
“So we did David’s stuff, which was good fun,<br />
and then the following year we kind of opened<br />
the doors, as it were, but nothing <strong>for</strong>mal to<br />
advertise the fact that we had started – just a<br />
couple of bookings from people, saying that they<br />
wanted to come and work here.”<br />
Over time, plans <strong>for</strong> the studio had necessarily<br />
changed, from being purely personal to<br />
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MONKEY PUZZLE HOUSE TO THE MANOR BARN<br />
commercial, and incorporating residential<br />
accommodation: “I already had two twin rooms<br />
upstairs at one end of the studio, in order that<br />
the people I was working with had somewhere<br />
to sleep when they came to stay, but now what’s<br />
happened is that people who are booking <strong>for</strong><br />
four weeks or longer are asking <strong>for</strong> their own<br />
individual rooms... They want a double bed so<br />
their wife can come with them, and so on; that’s<br />
something I didn’t really think about because I<br />
was never going to run this studio commercially."<br />
Finally Making It<br />
Super-successful independent Brit prog-rockers<br />
Porcupine Tree had just left the building (at time<br />
of writing) – satisfyingly satisfied, too. And the<br />
Porcupines aren’t the only ‘residing’ notable<br />
names to sing Monkey House Puzzle’s praises:<br />
“One of the last sessions that we did here was the<br />
Whybirds with Elliot Mazor; it was good to have<br />
him come over here from America and choose this<br />
studio, because he’s a really prestigious producer,<br />
and he really loved the place – the acoustics, and<br />
the whole working environment. He has vowed to<br />
come back, which, bearing in mind that he built<br />
Neil Young’s studio in northern Cali<strong>for</strong>nia and has<br />
his own studio in New York, is quite special.”<br />
High praise indeed; success can, of course,<br />
breed success, as Matthews knows only too<br />
well. Fortunately <strong>for</strong> him, Monkey Puzzle House<br />
is on a roll of sorts: “We’ve been at 100% since<br />
August last year – that’s weekends as well, bar<br />
a week off at Christmas; then there’s a charge<br />
<strong>for</strong> accommodation as well, so it’s not bad – not<br />
making a dent in my mortgage, but only because<br />
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I never finished the building off, plus a few other<br />
things that I’m trying to invest in as well. I was<br />
going to run everything through tape, but the<br />
money is just not there. I’ve got staircases stuffed<br />
with two-inch tapes underneath them with the<br />
prospect of using it again, but I don’t even have<br />
a two-inch tape machine here! It’s going to be an<br />
acquisition soon, because, hopefully, the budgets<br />
are becoming a bit more proportionate to the rest<br />
of the facilities that are here.”<br />
Ironically, maybe Matthews’ Monkey Puzzle<br />
House might ultimately benefit from the demise<br />
of those classic studios of yesteryear and beyond:<br />
“The big studios closing is a massive shame, and<br />
the main change <strong>for</strong> us would be that we might<br />
be able to nudge the rates up a little... It’s quite sad,<br />
really, but it’s just an indication of the budgets that<br />
are out there – the revenue that’s being generated<br />
by the whole swing round from a tour being there<br />
to promote a record, to a record existing as a nonprofit-making<br />
medium to promote a tour, which<br />
doesn’t bode well. But you’ve still got to record it;<br />
you’re just going to try and do it proportionately<br />
to what your takings are going to be.”<br />
For now, though, Matthews and Monkey<br />
Puzzle House engineer extraordinaire Tom Peters<br />
– Matthews’ reliable right-hand man since 2004,<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e the studio building even existed – clearly<br />
have their work cut out. �<br />
...................................<br />
INFORMATION<br />
Monkey Puzzle House<br />
� +44 (0) 1359 245050<br />
� www.monkeypuzzlehouse.com<br />
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