FEATURED STUDIOS
& SCENES
This 1986 footage of Kylie and Danni Minogue in the studio is either at RBX or Richmond Recorders. These two studios recorded the sound mix for Young Talent Time, a popular 80’s TV show as well as well as commercial and underground music.
Gear spotting: Fet 47 Neumann- Kylie’s mic (n.b. facing the camera, not the source); Neumann U87- Danni’s mic; Mixing console- MCI JH400/500 series?Tape machine- 24-track Model ?; Emulator II synth.
Do you know which studio this is? Or the engineer? Info can be submitted via the contact page.
SING SING, PLATINUM, KISS, MEDIASOUND, BEA
(1960’s-current)
Sing Sing is a renowned local recording studio into its fourth decade of operation. Founded by Kaj Dahlstrom who moved to Australia from Sweden with his parents at the age of 15. They initially lived in Queensland where he was playing in bands before relocating to Melbourne. Dahlstrom built a studio in 1975 in a rental house in East Melbourne to record his own music and friend’s bands. At this stage, he was working for Armstrong’s driving the audio truck sent out for location recordings recording live shows with Ern Rose and Roger Savage.
W & G, ARMSTRONG’S AAV, METROPOLIS
(1950’s-1990’s)
The impact of recording studios, engineers and the audio industry on our music culture has been vastly overlooked until recent times. Highlighted by an article headline in the Sydney Morning Herald (2015) describing Bill Armstrong, one of Melbourne and Australia’s most influential production figures, aged 86 at the time, as “the most prolific music recorder you’ve never heard of.” His experimentation with pioneering technology, entrepreneurial nature and involvement in various aspects of the audio and music industries since the 1950’s make his studios and those he was involved with an unquestionable starting point in discussion of Melbourne’s recording history.
RICHMOND RECORDERS
(1978-86)
Richmond Recorders was a studio founded at 17 Pearson St, East Richmond by Tim Stobart and Chris Napper. Described as the third choice of studios for record labels after Armstrong’s and TCS from the mid-1970’s, Richmond Recorders was a slightly more affordable option than the previous two spaces and attracted a variety of bands, many from the underground punk and new wave scenes. The studio changed hands in the mid-eighties when members of the Painters and Dockers and Lobby Lloyd (the Aztecs) took over the business and opened a pressing plant and record shop in the same street.
Some of the early recordings were engineered by John French of TCS, and a young engineer Tony Cohen who would make the studio his home and base for creating what he has been credited as the ‘sound of Melbourne’. This sound is usually in reference to a guitar-based, dark, intellectual, moody tone that is most regularly associated with bands such as the Birthday Party, Beasts of Bourbon, the Moodists and the Scientists, all bands that Cohen worked with throughout his career
Some of the early recordings were engineered by John French of TCS, and a young engineer Tony Cohen who would make the studio his home and base for creating what he has been credited as the ‘sound of Melbourne’. This sound is usually in reference to a guitar-based, dark, intellectual, moody tone that is most regularly associated with bands such as the Birthday Party, Beasts of Bourbon, the Moodists and the Scientists, all bands that Cohen worked with throughout his career
TELEVISION CITY SOUND
(1971-1974)
Television City Sounds (TCS) was a significant early recording studio of the early 1970s that captured Melbourne’s burgeoning bohemian rock sounds. The studio was an expansion of the GTV9 television recording studio at 22 Bendigo Street, Richmond. Established by Colin Stevenson, head of television audio at channel 9, as a recording space for the live variety show In Melbourne Tonight (IMT) (1957-1971).
The atmosphere of GTV9 was hectic and exciting due to the demand of Australian audiences for the new variety show entertainment platform.