The Bench

Focusrite Studio Console number 5 in The Focusrite Room at Platinum Underground, Arizona, restored after being rescued from the shuttered BOP Studios

BOP Studios: A Neve, an SSL and a Focusrite, in a Country That No Longer Exists

A homeland government's pension fund bought three of the greatest consoles ever built and installed them 19km outside Mmabatho, where...

BOP Studios: A Neve, an SSL and a Focusrite, in a Country That No Longer Exists

A homeland government's pension fund bought three of the greatest consoles ever built and installed them 19km outside Mmabatho, where...

Read More
Fela Kuti playing tenor saxophone in the studio with two singers of Africa 70 beside him

Fela Never Had a Studio: Where Afrobeat Was Actually Recorded

Everyone assumes Fela recorded at Kalakuta. His own sleeve credits Decca 16-Track Studios, Lagos, and there is no evidence Kalakuta...

Fela Never Had a Studio: Where Afrobeat Was Actually Recorded

Everyone assumes Fela recorded at Kalakuta. His own sleeve credits Decca 16-Track Studios, Lagos, and there is no evidence Kalakuta...

Read More
A restored Soundtracs CMX4400 analogue console, sixteen VU meters across the bridge and the routing matrix at the right

How Africa Got Multitrack: A Continental Timeline in Track Counts

In 1975 three Rhodesia Television employees put a half-inch 8-track, a 12:4:2 Soundcraft and a Revox A77 in a converted...

How Africa Got Multitrack: A Continental Timeline in Track Counts

In 1975 three Rhodesia Television employees put a half-inch 8-track, a 12:4:2 Soundcraft and a Revox A77 in a converted...

Read More
A highlife band on stage, the bandleader holding a guitar and pointing off-mic, singers beside him with a shaker and a gong-gong

Two EQ Knobs and a Fader: How the Golden Age of Highlife Was Actually Recorded

Francis Kwakye cut the records that define 1970s highlife with, in the Cambridge paper's own words, nothing but the console's...

Two EQ Knobs and a Fader: How the Golden Age of Highlife Was Actually Recorded

Francis Kwakye cut the records that define 1970s highlife with, in the Cambridge paper's own words, nothing but the console's...

Read More