A TRIP AROUND THE LO-FI LOUNGE
Joy Askew's Home Studio

by Mac Randall, Musician Magazine, October 1996

If your mental picture of a recording studio runs something along the lines of a windowless concrete bunker, prepare yourself for a shock when entering the New York abode of singer/songwriter/keyboardist Joy Askew. Her home studio, affectionately dubbed " the Lo-Fi Lounge," takes up a sizeable chunk of her living room, and with its colorful tapestries and big windows looking out over Manhattan's Upper West Side, it's one of the liveliest recording environments you're likely to see. "I need a lot of light and a feeling of space in order to work," Askew comments, "and when I first saw this place nearly three years ago, I instantly felt that I could work here. And it's true; I've done more work here than I've done in my life."

That work includes Askew's first solo album, Tender City (Private Music), which was recorded almost entirely in this room. Before stepping out on her own, Askew was best known for her work with Joe Jackson and Peter Gabriel, and fans of those artists will find much to admire in Tender City: finely crafted melodies, passionate eclecticism, and a distinctively English brand of soulfulness.

By the way, your eyes are not deceiving you; that really is a reel- to- reel tape machine in the background (a Tascam 38 eight-track, to be exact), and that really is the machine the album was recorded on. "I'm a typical musician ," Askew explains. "I've never had much money. and when I've had some, I've always put it back into what I'm doing. Thats why I still have this eight -track, which I bought in '87. However Askew did make enough money on the last Peter Gabriel tour to invest in a Soundcraft Spirit Studio 2402 24-channel mixing board. "I love it," she says with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Next to those two pieces, Askew counts the Neumann U87A microphone as the most important equipment in her studio. "With that mike, it's the same as going into a professional studio," she says. "Just record it flat and watch the meters, and you can't go wrong. It picks up everything, including the street noise outside, but who cares? You're not going to hear that on the final recording." For the last couple o years, the Neumann's been held in its place on the mike stand by a pair of Joy's old hairbands: This is the Lo-Fi Lounge after all," she laughs. Two other mics, both Shure SM57's wait on a nearby shelf, ready at any moment to be plugged into the ProCo PM 148 patch bay.

Though an Apple Macintosh Classic running Mark of the Unicorn Performer software and a Macintosh Power Book 520c sit nearby, Askew remains suspicious of computer technology. "It tends to get in the way," she says. I know people tell me it can do all this marvelous stuff, but whenever I've been around it, it gets the better of the humans."

Better then to stick to good old-fashioned instruments, like a Fender Squier Stratocaster, Washburn Festival Series EA30N acoustic guitar, Hamilton upright piano ( made by Baldwin - "My neighbours love the sound of this," joy quips), Korg CX3 organ, Roland RD-300S digital piano, and Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer. Sitting in front of the Hamilton, Askew discusses the subtelties of miking a piano. "The first time I did it I realised there must be a hundred different places for the mike. So I tried 5 different positions and I recorded all of them, but I could have spent weeks on it. I usually put it slightly towards the top, just above the opening, which I prop up."

The Peavey Classic 50 amp is safely non-digital, as are the pedals strew around the room: a Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive, MXR Dynacomp, vintage Boss Chorus Ensemble, and Boss FV-50 volume pedal, located right next to a Yamaha sustainpedal. ( The electric guitar part on Tender City's "Big Sky" was recorded with the Dynacomp going straight into the board.)

"The Boss chorus is quite similar to a vibrato on a Hammond," Joy says, "so I put the Korg organ through it and then through the Dynacord CLS22 Leslie simulator. Each stage distorts it more, so you get that bit of grit that you want."

Slightly more high-tech noisemakers include two Lexicon LXP-1 reverb units (used primarily for vocals and drums), A mark of the Unicorn MIDI Time Piece 11, dbx 160x compressor, Eventide H3000SE Ultra-Harmonizer, Akai s1000 sampler, Roland D-550 synth module, Yamaha SPX90 effects processor and an Akai S900 sampler.

"I never imagined that I'd make my record here," Joy confesses. "The important thing is not to judge, not to compare yourself to anything else. I have to keep telling myself, ' it's your ideas you're working on here, not somebody else's.'"