![]() “In the early 80s, there weren’t a lot of indie bands or experimental bands going into a studio to record their album. Bisi’s challenge was figuring that out through trial and error. Sonic Youth, for example, had developed a distorted, blown out live sound and weren’t sure how it should translate in the studio. There was often no clear road map for how to translate their sound to tape. Many of the artists Bisi recorded were pioneers who were playing new forms of music. Eventually, Laswell and Eno left, but Bisi stayed, quietly influencing the sound of early hip-hop, experimental music, and underground rock throughout the 80s and 90s. In 1979, Bisi, by then all of 18, moved into what was a nearly empty warehouse space in a desolate part of Brooklyn to start the studio as part of a collective with Laswell and Brian Eno. Bassist and producer Bill Laswell, who is best known for recording Herbie Hancock, took the teenager under his wing, arranging a kind of live sound apprenticeship at CBGB, allowing him to stage manage his events and taking him on tour as a roadie. ![]() His mother was a concert pianist and his father used to play tangos on the piano, but their son was fatally attracted to the countercultural noises that emerged downtown. This live surrealism is why certain kinds of guitar experimentalists seek him out to this day.īisi was born and raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan by Argentine parents who both passed away before he graduated high school. The live aspect happens downstairs the surrealism tends to creep in later, as part of the mixing process. “I think the experience I always went for was for things to sound live in a very surreal kind of way, because a great live experience is kind of surreal,” he reflects. Visceral immediacy is a hallmark of his work. “I always went for things to sound live in a very surreal kind of way, because a great live experience is surreal.” Bisi will surely find a way to capture the feeling of the moment in the recording. The sound is as raw as the environment, but the performances are electric. Don Godwin, on bass, produces an unearthly rumble. Brian Viglione, who has recorded with Bisi as the drummer for the Dresden Dolls, sits behind a drum kit, pounding the cymbal with a tambourine. Over an intercom, Bisi’s voice booms from the upstairs room: “Rolling.” Standing in front of a bank of effects pedals, circus cabaret impresario Sxip Shirey plays the harmonica and bellows the blues into a megaphone. ![]() In 2015, the engineer and his studio became the subject of a documentary titled Sound and Chaos, directed by Sara Leavitt and Ryan Douglass.Īt the back of the spacious room, the witnesses arrange themselves on and around an ancient couch and a wayward church pew, chatting and embracing warmly between takes. He’s done it all in this studio, the same place where he lives and works. He’s also engineered for several influential but little-known groups, such as noise rockers Live Skull, who reunited for the anniversary recording event, dozens of members of the no wave movement in the early 80s, and Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” In more recent years, he’s recorded albums by Swans, Serena Maneesh, and the Dresden Dolls. The unique event reunites many of the sonic provocateurs that founder Martin Bisi has worked with over more than three decades.īisi has been the hand at the controls for some of the first recordings of Afrika Bambaataa, Sonic Youth, and Lydia Lunch. The group of assorted musicians and friends have gathered in the industrial-looking basement in Gowanus, Brooklyn for the second day of a marathon recording session celebrating the studio’s 35th anniversary. It’s noon on Sunday, January 17, and sound engineer Martin Bisi is hosting at least 13 people in the recording room of B.C.
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