bytesgasil.blogg.se

My friends would maybe call it my “freak out.” I stopped being a contrarian, I started striving for solidarity both musically and politically. Anything I was a part of, I would try and find problems with it, whether it was feminism or Democrats or whatever.

I used to have the nickname “The Contrarian” among my friends. It was a reaction to working with intense people like Gira and Laswell, like I was trying not to be like them. Well, with the album Sirens of the Apocalypse, I was kind of mocking myself and my influences.

How has that impacted your own songwriting? You’ve obviously worked with a huge number of artists over the years as an engineer. People tend to put all the credit on certain big names, but it’s everything - infrastructure, clubs, fans, journalists. It’s in the shadow of New York, but it’s a mysterious, organic community thing that makes a scene work. Even a city like Asbury Park, New Jersey, there’s been so much great music from there. I haven’t seen Grohl’s documentaries yet, but I’ve been impressed at how they approach specific cities and local scenes. Have you seen a recent increase in concern about fidelity, or a recent fondness for recording studios, too? Do you think projects like Dave Grohl’s Sound City have made an impact? I thought it was going away as a culture.

Just like with vinyl, I thought it was over, but it’s not. There’s been a resurgence of people caring about making albums. Yeah, it’s actually less bleak now than it was when we made the film. People have asked me why I don’t get proactive and leave, but finding a space like this is more and more rare. The value of the location increases constantly, and that’s the reason I’m staying put. We’re stable-ish, we’ve got about two or three more years I think. Martin Bisi: Yeah, I’m at home now, above the studio. Is it still operational? Are you still holding out? This interview has been edited for clarity and length.īandwidth: In your recent documentary, you talk about the challenges of gentrification facing your studio. A man of many interests, he talked gentrification’s impact on music, the religious experience for atheists and learning to accept your own artistic influences. The following day, he shows the BC Studio documentary and performs at the Windup Space in Baltimore. I talked to Bisi in advance of a local show he plays March 7 at Takoma venue Electric Maid in support of his 2014 release, Ex Nihilo. It was recently the subject of a 2014 documentary called Sound and Chaos: The Story of BC Studio, featuring interviews with many of the musicians he’s worked with over the years. He’s produced records for Sonic Youth, Swans, The Dresden Dolls, Bill Laswell, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Lydia Lunch, William Burroughs and Ginger Baker, and he’s worked in varying capacities with Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, White Zombie, Helmet, Boredoms, Cibo Matto and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (on the soundtrack to Down By Law).īisi co-founded Brooklyn’s BC Studio in the early 1980s with Laswell and Eno, and he still owns and operates the facility. And he will never forget the afternoon when six kids outside the studio beat the daylights out of two cops.You might not know his name, but if you’ve kept up with avant-rock music even slightly over the last 30 years, you’ve probably heard his work: Martin Bisi is a producer, engineer, studio owner, songwriter and musician with a musical résumé long enough to impress any album collector.īisi helmed the recording console during the recording of Herbie Hancock’s seminal Future Shock, which featured the landmark sounds of “ Rockit,” and he manned the faders during Afrika Bambaataa’s “Shango Message” sessions. Upon choosing the corner of Third Street and Third Avenue, he soon learned that his building was home to squatters and the surrounding area was the domain of gangs with names such as the Crazy Homicides. “Sound and Chaos” follows Bisi from the time he first signed the lease, thinking he was renting out a pad for his five-person art collective.īisi said he started looking for a post-industrial place to live upon moving to New York, before he had even heard of Williamsburg or Park Slope. “This is one of the last remaining studios with a long history,” said producer Martin Bisi, who landed the two-floor space between Third and Fourth avenues for $500 a month in 1976. Long before a federal clean-up was poised to dredge the toxic sludge from the bottom of the Gowanus Canal, one canal-side recording studio was kicking out a different kind of jam.Ī new documentary chronicles the rags-to-semi-riches story of BC Studio, which has honed the sound of some of rock’s most influential acts since back in the day, when the neighborhood that welcomed a Whole Foods Market in December was better known for its baseball bat-wielding gangs.