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 Open
the door and enter The Village!
Liz
Phair & friends at the Village
What do Guster, Dido, Usher,
Café Tacuba, Damien Rice, REM, and Ricki Lee
Jones have in common?
They’ve all been spotted recently working at The
Village, Los Angeles’ premiere Westside recording
facility.
No Doubt with producer
Glen Ballard
With
an impressive history, the Village continues to be a
top recording hot spot for cutting edge artists, both
established and new-on-the-scene. "Past projects
by artists such as Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and Sly
and the Family Stone have contributed to its glory,
but The Village remains vibrant today largely because
of its original artist-friendly philosophy," says
CEO Jeff Greenberg. Evidence of this consistent philosophy
are loyal clients including No Doubt, Korn, Red Hot
Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters, to name a few.
Steely
Dan circa '73
Established
in 1968 in a 30,000 square foot former Masonic Temple,
The Village is a multi-story, multi-studio complex featuring
the best of both modern and vintage gear. It’s historic
Studio D has not only a spacious live recording room with
five isolation booths, but is also connected via audio
and video tie lines to the building’s second floor
with its 4000 square foot performance space complete with
stage and chandeliers.
The Village ordered the first Neve 88R for its Studio
D in 2001. "We postponed the install in favor of
lockout sessions by Guns & Roses," says Greenberg.
The Village’s main studios all boast Neve consoles:
Studio A features a vintage 72-input 8048, and Studio
B with its VR Legend, is a
favorite for scoring work. Also in the complex is Studio
F, a compact, multi-purpose surround suite offers Pro
Tools HD systems linked with a Fibre channel SAN.
Mya
and friends
To
be a fly on The Village’s walls would make one
a witness to legendary recording sessions of Rock and
Roll history, including The Rolling Stones’ Goat’s
Head Soup, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, Eric
Clapton’s landmark, After Midnight, as well
as his Grammy Award-winning Tears in Heaven,
most Steely Dan records including Aja, numerous
Bob Dylan records, as well as modern blockbusters including
the last three Smashing Pumpkins releases, The Wallflowers,
Rage Against The Machine, Melissa Etheridge, The Red
Hot Chili Peppers’ By the Way, the Foo Fighters’
One By One, and Nelly’s blockbuster Nellyville.
Mike Myers and Possy
The Village is also considered to be one of the Hollywood
film industry’s premier recording and post-production
facilities where film scores for Finding Nemo, The Shawshank
Redemption, The Mighty Wind, Something About Mary, and
Almost Famous, were recorded. Additionally, TV spots
are recorded at the Village for handful of commerical
companies including Jack In The Box and Porsche.
Aaron
Carter and Chris Douridas
The
recent buzz at The Village is due, in part, to almost
daily live recordings in the facility's Neve 88R-equipped
Studio D, where the nation’s hottest radio program,
KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, broadcasts some
of the most exciting music to be found on the air--or
on the ‘Net. Helmed by influential tastemaker Nic
Harcourt, the morning sessions at The Village are not
only broadcast in real time but are also simulcast and
archived on KCRW.com.
In one recent week alone, Village staff engineer Jason
Wormer recorded Morning Becomes Eclectic sets by The
Eels, Seal, and red hot up-and-comers East Sound Mountain,
The 88s, The Frames and Butterfly Boucher.
Seal and Chris Douridas
Powering The Village’s hit making studios are a
bevy of Apple Macintosh computers, which run ProTools™
in the various tracking and composer studios, and scheduling
and accounting software in executive offices. The Village
uses more than twenty Apple Macintosh computers on a
daily basis – not including additional ever-present
G5 towers and personal PowerBooks brought in by clients.
Greenberg notes, “About 95% of our sessions these
days are recorded to hard disk and backed-up nightly
through our Storage Area Network – a process that
depends entirely on the performance and reliability
of our Apple Macs.”
Pictured above is
Jeff Greenberg, CEO of The Village with one of the numerous
Macintosh Computers used throughout LA's most notable
and historical recording studio.
"Long
before the Apple Computer Company revolutionized the
way people listened to music with the iPod, iTunes,
and the iTunes Music Store, The Village was using Apple
Computers exclusively to record the hits that would
eventually wind up on millions of iPods," says
Greenberg.
According
to Jeff, The Village was one of the very first professional
recording studios in the country to completely embrace
the Apple platform.
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Heart's
Nancy Wilson with Village CEO Jeff Greenberg on deck
at Village's roof-top lounge with views of the Pacific
ocean.
The
Village attracts top musicians who need the finest equipment,
ambiance and support services to record their music. In
addition to great artists, the studio has recorded the
film scores for Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, Moulin Rouge,
Girl Interrupted, Stewart Little, Million Dollar Hotel,
Hurricane, Next Friday, The X-Files Movie, Toy Story 2,
Mulan, The Shawshank Redemption, There's Something About
Mary, Big Daddy, Oscar and Lucinda, Con Air, Dr. Doolittle,
Mad City, the Oscar winning Good Will Hunting, and the
Ali.
Sarah
Mclachlan and Nic Harcourt
For the past three years, The Village has been nominated
as studio of by the year the readers of Mix magazine.
Jonathan Davis
Jeff states, “Our Storage Area Network is a centralized
server that sends all of the sessions through fiber to
a secure block of hard disks with a RAID configuration.
A dedicated Apple Macintosh G5 CPU backs-up all of the
data on a nightly basis, ensuring security and redundancy
for all of our sessions.”
studio D with Neve 88R
All
Village Studios use Apple Macintosh G5 with an Apple
Cinema Display, again running ProTools, with all sessions
recorded to the Storage Area Network.
Studio B recently hosted the Stone Temple Pilots who
recorded their latest CD, 4, and it was the Smashing
Pumpkins’ studio-of-choice where they recorded
their last three CDs. And, as rumor has it, Guns &
Roses have been holed up in B working on a famously
forthcoming CD.
Brian Setzer and John
Holbrook
Studio
F (designed by Vincent VanHaaf) recorded Missy Elliot’s
Under Construction, and Nelly’s Nellyville,
two of the most successful hip-hop albums of 2002/2003.
Ricki Lee Jones’ new CD, The Evening of My Best
Day, was recorded and mixed entirely at The Village
produced by Jones and David Kalesh and recorded by Jason
Wormer and Mark Johnson, with Joe Chiccarelli on board
mixing. Jones’ first album of original material
in six years, the long-awaited CD is released on the
V2 label.
Korn
Sessions --
Jonathan Davis Michael Beinhorn Frank Filipetti
Most
recently the score for Russell Crowe’s Master
and Commander (the 200-million-dollar epic) was
recorded in Studio D with Ry Cooder producing with Rail
Rogut engineering.
DaveGrohl
and JimScott
Other
engineers and producers hard at work at The Village
on recent projects have been producer Steve Berlin with
engineer Robert Carranza recording Los Lobos, R&B
giants Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis producing Usher with
Ian Cross engineering.
Ricki Lee Jones and
freinds at the Village
Summing
it all up, Greenberg explains, “Whether recording
in one of our tracking studios, surfing the web during
a break on any one of the numerous iMacs in the studio
lounges, writing in a composer’s studio, or working
in one of our offices, our goal is to help make the
experience enjoyable. The goal is to provide the latest
tools and best people to help deliver artist/producer's
vision.”
The Village People
Contact:
Sharon
Lewis, Studio Manager
The Village (310) 478-8227
web site: http://villagestudios.com
Watch the video interview with producer John Wooler
from the historical Village Studios here!
To
view download FREE Real One Player here!
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