lofish
studio closes operations on Jan 20th 2015
For further bookings please
contact our engineers directly:
Chris
Gilroy: 401.248.3540
Reed
Taylor: 347.563.0280
Kathryn
Ourlian: 313.806.2664
Mp
Kuo: 646.288.4285
Alex
(Sean) Seant: 718.577.8416
Jabbath
Roa: 646.833.9734
Walter
Fischbacher: 347.993.3561 (Mastering only)
Farewell
to Lofish Studios
The
time has come to say good-bye. Lofish Studios, our little joint on 28th
street, is shutting its doors for good with its last recording day on
January 20th.
Walter
and I started this thing, oh, 17 years or so ago in our living room,
and it morphed a few times, moved locations a few times and settled in
for a respectable 11 years on this last spot.
But
gentrification doesn't stop for anyone, and after seeing several other
studios go out of business due to its voracious appetite, our home away
from home is going down the same road.
It's
the same old story, heard by the proverbial campfire so many times
before: building gets sold, new owners triple the rent and kapow -
you're out. Many people asked us why we don't simply move somewhere
else. Relocate. Well, we DID move. We DID relocate. To this place, 11
years ago. But back then we got incredibly lucky, and circumstances
aligned so we could actually afford to take this place over. Now things
are very different in the commercial real estate industry.
In
1998 Walter and I went to buy a computer, and a scanner, and a color
printer. And a CD duplicator that could burn ONE CD in - wait for it -
double the playing time! Since we were the only ones among our jazz
musician friends who had all of this awesome equipment and a
prehistoric version of Photoshop, our friends asked if they could use
our little burner to make some demos, clobber together a CD cover to
get gigs. And voila - Lofish Productions was born. Back then it was
lacking the Inc, that came later. As did the studio, when the
storefront facility below our apartment became available. For a while
we had our own 3-story empire going down on Eldridge Street. The CD
duplication business thrived for about 3 years, until it got killed
dead by 9/11 and the rise of personal computers that actually came with
CD burners.
But
by that time we had already built a small studio in the back of the
storefront, with a live room in the basement that you could only reach
through a pee stained trap door on the sidewalk outside the building.
It was funky, it was musty, it was glorious.
When
landlord issues forced us out of that place I combed through Craigslist
over and over until I stumbled on the ad for a studio on 28th street.
It was love at first sight. I remember laying down on the floor of
studio A, listening to the silence and feeling at peace.
The
studio has had its ups and downs, like any business. But we survived
year in and year out, even the crash of 2008 and the subsequent Great
Recession. A lot of that was due to a great team of engineers who quite
frankly worked their asses off attempting to make every session a
success. And of course, you, our clients. Without you, your continued
patronage and loyalty to the studio none of this would have been
possible.
So
I thank you, the people who chose to come to Lofish and create their
magic here. I thank you for your inspiration, your craziness, your art.
I thank you for continuing to believe in your music, and for continuing
to be creators in an environment that appears to be progressively less
conducive to the arts. You have been great. Please continue to be the
fabulous, colorful and bright beings that you are.
And
finally I want to thank the Lofish team, past and present, most
notably: Reed, Chris, MP, Kathryn, Sean, Jabbath, Alex, John, Shachar,
and Mike. I salute you for digging your heels in, keeping Lofish
up and running, and doing thousands of sessions, small and large, with
the famous and infamous. You guys rocked this house.
Yours,
Elisabeth
and Walter
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