Patchwork Studios Refit
Patchwork Studios has been my — and Fusion Orchestra 2’s — creative home for about a decade. It’s at the same time invigorating and distinctly unsettling to see it in pieces, being rebuilt in a different shape.
In amongst the cobwebs there are actually cable runs and bits of equipment in here that were wired up for things to do with Spinedance (the band that Col and I were in before we started FO2). I found a set list for one of our gigs amongst the wiring diagrams while I was clearing out, with songs like Billy Jean and Can’t Get You Out Of My Head on the set list (though needless to say, they were quite “alternative” in their arrangement). One of the two computers running the studio has a floppy drive in it. It might be working but I have no idea where to buy disks to check that.
The studio was already in need of a refit during the recording of Casting Shadows. A few sessions were brought to a premature halt by equipment fizzling out but we scraped by with a couple of quick repairs and upgrades, careful not to rock the boat too much. Then after that there was the finishing of Patchwork Cacophony, and again I didn’t dare change anything major while the recording of that was still in progress. But now it’s time for change.
So far it’s taken three days to just get to the point where most of the old cabling is out and enough (barely enough) new cabling is in that I can listen to music on the speakers again. There’s two more deliveries of cables and other unexciting, non-sound-making equipment still in the post, and at the moment I still can’t get a sound out of most of the keyboard rig, let alone plug a microphone in anywhere that will make a difference.
It’s the musical equivalent of moving away from a house with many good memories because you’ve grown to the stage where you need more bedrooms, but even as I nervously say goodbye to a setup that has served me well both for commercial releases and private experiments, I’m excited about the prospect of recording in a space that has been put together with a strong idea of how my recordings function rather than something cobbled together iteratively as we find our way.
The next album, whatever that is, is going need to be a stunner to justify this!
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