Astoria (recording studio)
The Astoria is a house boat turned recording studio, which is owned by David Gilmour, guitarist of Pink Floyd. It is moored on the River Thames near Hampton Court. Gilmour purchased the boat in 1986, because he "spent half of [his] life in recording studios with no windows, no light" but on the boat there are many windows, with beautiful scenery on the outside".[1]
The boat was built in 1911 for impresario Fred Karno, who wanted to have the best houseboat on the river. He designed it so that there could be an entire 90-piece orchestra playing on the deck of the ship.[2]
Parts of the two most recent Pink Floyd albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell were recorded on the boat, as well as parts of the latest David Gilmour solo album On an Island. It was also used for mixing the Pink Floyd live albums Delicate Sound of Thunder and P•U•L•S•E as well as the P•U•L•S•E VHS/DVD, David Gilmour's Remember That Night DVD and 2008 live album, Live in Gdańsk.
According to an interview with Phil Taylor (David Gilmour's Guitar Technician) that appeared in Tape Op Magazine in 2005, [3] UREI 813 studio main monitors with Phase Linear amps were orginally installed in the Astoria to turn it into a recording studio. The UREI 813's were replaced around 1990 by ATC [4] main monitors. Currently, customized ATC SCM 150 ASL active speakers are used for main left and right with a standard ATC SCM 150ASL active speaker used as the center channel. The center channel sits above an ATC SCM 0.1/15 subwoofer. The surround monitors are two ATC SCM 50ASL. A variety of near-field monitor speakers are used including Yamaha NS10's and Auratone's depending on who happens to be working at the studio. The acoustic design was done with the assistance of Nick Whittaker, an independent acoustician, and much of the gear was recommended by James Guthrie (record producer) and Andrew Jackson (recording engineer), Pink Floyd's engineers since The Wall. James Guthrie (record producer) has a similar ATC 5.1 setup in his Das Boot Studio in Lake Tahoe, North California. In 2003, James Guthrie remixed The Dark Side of the Moon for the 30th anniversary hybrid Super Audio CD, which includes a 5.1 channel DSD surround sound version remixed from the original 16-track studio tapes. [5] The Astoria currently includes a Neve, 88R mixing console, as well as three Studer A827 multi-tracks and ATR 100 tape recorders, which were modded by Tim de Paravicini. The conversion to a studio also required 23 kilometers of cabling, which were sourced from Van den Hul cables [6] from Holland. There are various compressors from Pye and EAR 660 tube designs, as well as EAR[7] 825's for EQ.
An interview of Andrew Jackson (recording engineer) appeared in the October 2007 issue of Resolution Magazine [8] and a video interview of Andrew Jackson, sitting at the mixing console of the Astoria Studio, is available online at RecordProduction.com [9]
References
- ^ 2005 documentary Three Men in a Boat
- ^ Astoria's history
- ^ Tape Op Magazine #46(Mar/Apr '05) [1]
- ^ ATC Home Page [2]
- ^ James Guthrie Interview about the remix of The Dark Side of the Moon for the 30th anniversary hybrid Super Audio CD [3]
- ^ Van den Hull Home Page [4]
- ^ EAR Yoshino Ltd.
- ^ October 2007 Resolution Magazine [5]
- ^ RecordProduction.com [6]
51°24′43″N 0°21′29″W / 51.411885°N 0.358091°W
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