Good friends Joel Graves and Robert Cappadona purchased New Monkey Studio together in August of 2004. They bought it from the family of the late, great Elliott Smith—a former acquaintance of Joel's and a musician he deeply admired.
"At the time of Elliott’s death in October of 2003," Joel told us, "I was in a band with several of [Elliott's] then-current bandmates, and it just felt right to try to keep the studio alive. Over 15 years later, we are still going and proud to share our space. Whether you're currently an unknown artist with a vision or Don Was, we welcome all."
The centerpiece of the control room is our Triad Trident A-Range, believed by Malcom Toft to be one of the first three of approximately 13 of these legendary desks that were built in the early 1970s at out of Triad / Trident Studios UK.
The board was originally commissioned and installed at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, where it was used by artists ranging from Cat Stevens to Rush. After spending the '80s and '90s in Nashville, Elliott Smith acquired the console and had it trucked out to Los Angeles.
The studio was originally constructed as a commercial jazz room in the early 1980s. Thoughtful construction elements include: a raised, sand-filled control room floor to reduce vibrations, audio wiring built into the walls, and non-parallel surfaces to combat standing sine waves, and giant Tannoy mains built into the walls—something that I've found to be quite a rarity today.
Obscured by the console are Elliott's Sony MCI JH24 multi-track two-inch tape machine and an ATR 102 1/2-inch two-track mix-down deck (that we acquired from Jane’s Addiction).
Our hearts might be all analog, but we have bridged our vintage hardware with modern digital workflow via a pair of UA Apollo x16 interfaces (running Pro Tools HD and Ableton Live 10, with complete UA plugin suite) and a trusty Mac Pro cylinder.
