Vintage Gear, Natural Reverb, Greek Gods: The Story of Martin Bisi’s BC Studio

By Keith Walsh
Legendary producer, composer and performer Martin Bisi recently released his stunning experimental album, Feral Myths, which features new forms of rock composition and mythic themes, while documenting tales of New York city, including a single about a disastrous storm of 2021.

Bisi explains: “The name Ida struck me as like a Grecian deity. So that’s why I was interested in doing a song about Ida. I like stories of demigods and stuff …like the song ‘Silver Guardians,’I actually mentioned Helen of Troy. I called Helen of Troy to be your guide, right? So there’s an aspect of me that I guess just likes Greek Theater. Even ‘Sirens Of The Apocalypse,’ that was a Greek Myth.” (That song is the title track from Bisi’s 2008 album.)

Indeed, Feral Myths is a dramatic work that incorporates innovative production techniques, traditional acoustic and electronic music, and stellar guest performers, all in a wild and raucous mix benefiting from the natural reverb found at Bisi’s historic BC Studio.

“I have these two massive rooms underneath me,” Bisi explains. “They are separated by glass, they’re big, really big and they have a lot of ambience.” The warm sound of Bisi’s work is achieved using lots of vintage gear in addition to a Pro Tools setup. “I use an MCI board from the 70s, and I use the preamps just that are on the channels except for some things — like there’s a snare drum…Specifically snare drum is tricky. So I use a different preamp on a snare drum but basically everything else, I just use the preamps on the channels on the board. So they’re from the 70s and you know, they’re solid state but I think that makes a big difference, and also the rooms. The rooms are the most indispensable.”

With a little help from his friends, Bisi turned an abandoned factory in New York into a hitmaking recording studio. “It was abandoned, filled with debris and I just took it out of there,” he tells me. “The whole thing was an old factory…So that’s why on the ground floor, I think that there were big steam engines down there, or maybe there was like a horse stable, just crazy stuff. That’s why there’s All these high ceilings and you know, it’s pretty massive industrial stuff, the area with the control room. So basically the recording area is underneath the control room. It’s on a different level.”

Way back in 1980, Brian Eno played a role in the creation of BC Studio. which was the site of work on tracks for Eno’s album On Land.  “He had a hand in helping it get off the ground,” Bisi told me. “I found the space and then he was interested in helping our group out –Material – and was interested in working in the space and kind of helped that happen which is very generous.” Material is a group formed by Bisi, bassist Bill Laswell, and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn. This team also worked on Herbie Hancock’s album Future Shock and the hit single “Rockit” from 1983.

I mentioned that there seemed to be some osmosis going on between he and Eno that resulted in an overlap of sounds. Bisi explained; “At that time, I wasn’t that focused yet on No Wave. And he had, he had a big part of No Wave, like, right, because he had that record called No New York in 1977 that really identified what No Wave was. And then it would then when we were connecting with him, starting to connect with him in the studio was like 1980 and the session with him was 1981, and I hadn’t been thinking I’d necessarily be moving into No Wave territory. So that, that so basically, even though it seems later like the connection was obvious between me and us and, Eno, at the time I didn’t really see the connection he was, you know, he did much poppier music.”

Feral Myths is on Black Freighter Records.
Featured image by Yana Davydova.

Feral Myths On Spotify
Feral Myths On Bandcamp
Martin Bisi On Bandcamp
Martin Bisi dot com
BC Studio
Martin Bisi at PunkRockBeat dot com
Martin Bisi at Popular Culture Beat dot com
Martin Bisi And “Rockit” At Synthbeat dot com

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