DOWNLOAD: MartinBisi_88_int

Bisi has the interview available as text on his website, but when I stumbled across the original print version in a giant pile of old guitar magazines I bought, it seemed somehow more poignant to read it in the original late-80s dressing.

In the year prior to beginning work on my studio Gold Coast Recorders, I sublet B.C. Studio from Martin; my writing partner GJ and I shared the space with Jason Lafarge. I didn’t get a hell of a lot done there; one album that failed to attract much attention and a few pieces of TV commercial music; but I did have the opportunity to have many enlightening conversations with Martin.  I can’t say that I have ever met a recording engineer/producer who had such an unclouded understanding of relationship between musical performance, records, and the technology that intervenes between those two things.  At the risk of sounding a little too gushy, I will say that Martin is both truly an artist and also completely unpretentious; that’s a tough line to walk.  Martin’s got an incredible list of credits and a ton of insights to offer.   I did a recorded interview with Martin a couple of years ago, and god (or intern) willing, I hope to get it online at some point.   BTW, the Parisi interview fails to convey the incredible size and strangeness of BC studio; the live room is a circa 1860 stone chamber approx. 3000 sq feet in size with 40 foot ceilings.  Final note: all of the equipment that you see in those 1988 photos was still in exactly the same place, and still in service, when I was last there in 2009.    How’s that for preservation.