RAK Studios was first established by Mickie Most and it opened up in 1976 and it started
with this room and Studio 2 and then in the mid eighties they bought a bit more of the
building and opened up Studio 3 and Studio 4. Yeah over the history of RAK there's been
some massive records done here, a lot of the Hot Chocolate stuff, Kim Wilde which was published
by RAK, Vienna was done here, The Bends was done here by Radiohead, Take That Patience,
and that record was done here. But yeah there’s been numerous massive records done over the history.
Yeah I think the ethos Mickie brought to the studio was, it was one of combined
professionalism but also a homely feeling and that every studio has daylight so you feel
in contact with the world but you also feel that you can put your feet up and relax and
I think putting artists at ease is one of the sort of most easily forgotten things about
the process of making a record. The setup at RAK is there’s four studios,
there's two API rooms, an EVR Legend, an SSL room and there's also two small writing rooms
as well which were spaces that were empty before and we've brought them back to life
to use them as extra space because we're getting so busy really.
In each studio at RAK we've got a protools rig and also studio 1, 2 and 3 have 24 track
tape machines and they're all still fully working. There's a few bits of gear that're
considered reasonably rare at RAK. The API's are the major selling point of these two rooms
and these were installed in 1976 when the studio opened and I think they're the only
two current working ones in commercial studios in Britain. We've got a few other bits and
pieces. A Fairchild 670, which is very rare, a Yamaha CS80 keyboard which is also pretty
rare and lots, we have a large mic collection with quite a few vintage and rare mics in there.
We have three Valve 47's, two M50's, which they get used all the time.
I think my favourite room to work in at RAK is Studio 1. It's obviously, it’s the biggest
room here but it just sounds killer for drums. I'd probably say it's the best drum room in
London, if not, I'm slightly biased, but if not the world. But yeah it's great, there's
great daylight in here and a great vibe in here. And it's, you almost feel like you're
sort of on the Starship Enterprise with the wrap around console in here and being raised up
above the studio floor. So the desk in studio one is a 1976 API desk
and it's a 48 channel desk with 32 channels that you can use for monitoring or you can
split the desk in two and use it 24 mic preamps or 24 channels of monitoring and it's a great
sounding board. Awesome tight mid range and yeah as I said it's one of the two or three
in Britain in main facilities. Probably one of the biggest records done in Studio 1 on
this board was The Bends and another interesting single that was done, Fairytale of New York,
was done in Studio 1 as well on this board. The desk in Studio 2 is another API. It has
24 mic preamps and 32 channels for monitoring. It's a slightly different desk in that you
can't split it. The mic preamps on one side are just used as mic preamps, and the other
side is just for monitoring. But another great sounding desk of the same vintage.
The desk in studio three is an EVR Legend and that's a reasonably new addition I think
we got it in about a year ago. And that came out of Studio 2 in Abbey Road and so yeah
there were a lot of great records made on it before it came from there and obviously
coming from Abbey Road it was in tip top condition and hopefully it will have quite a few more
years of service here. But its nice that you have the contrast between being able to track
and mix on an EV in Studio 3 or being able to track and mix on an API in Studio 1 for
a more sort of vintage vibe I suppose. The last studio is Studio Four which is a
mix room and that's got an SSL4000 E Series console which is a classic famous mixing desk
and it’s yeah a great sounding board, great EQ's on it and we also have a vocal booth
in that room as well so we can do vocal overdubs and writing which it gets used for a lot.
RAK survived where so may other studios have closed I think for a couple of reasons. One,
the desks and the rooms that we've got here and two, the quality of staff in the building.
And I think it's something that you can't really get any more if you need to record
a string section, you need to record a full band you need a large space, a large sound-proofed,
great sounding space to do it in and I think that they've run the business really well.
And people search out RAK specifically for the desks, the rooms and the people that we've
got here. I hope that the future holds for RAK more
of the same. We’ve been really busy recently and I think that the music industry is slowly
turning a corner and the fact that vinyl sales are the highest they've been for five years
and I think mainly selling to 25 to 30 year olds and under shows that there's a desire
for higher quality music and I think people are going to start demanding more from their
records and RAK's perfectly set up for that and I think, well I hope that budgets will
sort of stay the same or be going up over the next few years and allow more bands to
use places like RAK before there's not many of us left.