Cable Hell Studio

Hjem
Danmark
Aarhus
Cable Hell Studio

Cable Hell Studio is an analog recording studio in Aarhus. Ambitious, no bu****it and affordable. Also I can do punch ins or comps if need be.

Cable Hell is an analogue studio built around a 24-track Otari MTR90 MKII tape machine and a DDA Q mixing desk. Relaxed atmosphere, rivers of coffee included in the price, indoors smoking and I can work hard for 15 hours per session to get your tracks on tape. The room and gear can facilitate recording four or five people at the same time with minimal crosstalk between instruments. I’m mostly fami

liar with recording various kinds of psychedelic rock, garage rock, folk and shoegaze but got open ears to lots of interesting music and tends to listen to almost everything except modern FM pop and modern metal. I only record music on tape and mix on an analog mixing desk as I prefer both the sonics and the workflow – it’s the sound of 95 percent of my favourite records. However this means that I can’t always fix it if you’re playing out of time or your vocals are flat, so rehearse your songs before arrival unless your material is highly improvisational, your music calls for a certain level of sloppiness or you can afford the additional cost of experienced session musicians. It is not the stone age though and of course I can edit random breathing noises, chatting, amp buzz, etc. out of an otherwise good performance without breaking much sweat. Punch ins is preferable as it doesn’t degrade the audio quality. Comps involves taking elements from typically several vocal tracks and putting them down to one “best of” track and deleting the old ones once we’re happy with the compiled take. This comes with a slight loss of sound quality though and is not ideal for all styles of music. If we feel like exceeding the 24 tracks available I bounce stuff like toms, backing vocals, doubled guitar leads and percussion together and erase the original tracks. Found it worth mentioning in case you enjoy the sonics of analog tape but are not familiar with the workflow. For you geeks and oldtimers who might be reading this, sorry for wasting your time stating the obvious. Most people need to feel relaxed to pull off a great performance and therefore I have a rather laizzez faire policy as for behaviour in the studio – you can party if you like or you can be dead-on analytical and stick to tea, your choice. Only things that won’t tolerate is racism, sexism or homophobia – or behaviour that puts mine our my friends equipment in danger of a pricey repair such as bottles or cups on the amps or near the desk. Besides that I’m quite easy going. Before a mixing session or tracking particularly demanding instruments I can recommend bringing some music that you know really well and listen to it on our breaks to get used to sound of the speakers and the room – will save everyone a lot of regrets as our EQ’ing decisions will depend on what we hear in the room. As for taste in music I’m into lots of stuff but are particularly fond of is psychedelic rock, shoegaze, old soul music and classic pop and rock from the 60’s to the early 80’s. A few favourites amongst producers are Roy Thomas Baker, Jimmy Miller, Delia Derbyshire, Lee Hazlewood, Isaac Hayes, Roy Hallee, George Martin (obviously), Kevin Shields, Phil Spector and Martin Hannett. I love stacking up backing vocals so there ends up being 20 or more voices. Also got a passion for loads of percussion – there’s a nice collection at the studio. I try to make decisions that benefit the songs and always be respectful towards the facts that it’s your music. If you have an extremely clear vision of how you want everything to sound and got loads of studio experience let me know and I will stick to being a technician and only interfere in purely technical matters. If you would prefer mixing our recording elsewhere digitizing the tracks can be arranged. The room is fairly dry and small, hence it is not ideally suited if you want to record a larger string section in one go but for that I can recommend other studios. Drop me a line on 26784652 or text me at [email protected] if you’re up for a recording or want to see the studio. Looking forward to work my ass off to make your songs sound awesome. Gear includes a DDA Q mixing desk, Otari MTR-90 MKII and a lot of quality mics and some decent outboard. Complete gearlist at https://cablehellstudio.dk/gear/

05/11/2024

Gluing new components in vintage electronics is offensive you say? Hard to argue with a brand name like that.

Never the less there’s one less thing to worry about the next 40 years and the obscure Italian Leslie clone are getting to sound rather incredible. It’s downright scary on electric guitar and next time I got a rock trio in where getting a big stereo image on guitars without too many forced “alibi” overdubs this will likely sort the issue before there is one.

23/08/2024

More or less done mixing the first single of a forthcoming album with some of the most exciting experimental music to ever hit tape in this studio. It's funky, it's noisy as hell and got some pretty amazing catchy hooklines.

Lead by impro veteran Peter Andreas Ebbesen and somewhere in between a solo project and a super group with musicians cherry picked for their skills and vibe who's given free roam to do their thing, then yours truly edit the f**k out of it and saving the best bits which sometimes means most of a performance and at other times five seconds from a full song overdub.

This is a gift to a producer, controlled chaos at its best.

Most pictures by Peter Ebbesen who brought a proper camera to a few sessions.

05/07/2024

John Sage is a music archeologist armed with an old Akai sampler and flair for the absurd, digging through the dirt that the mainstream largely forgotten and turning it into something new.

Mastering by yours truly. Don't normally do this task as its a lot more comfortable complaining about how everyone else does it wrong ;-) But since this is neither recorded or mixed at Cable Hell or by one of my direct competitors I couldn't resist.

The saga continues. Beats and stuff from the second quarter of 2024. Credits: Live bass: Niels Ninetoe Mastering: Jonathan Højgaard Jensen @ Cable Hell studi...

04/07/2024

Can't wait to share the next single with Gaardens. Here's the previous one again... a beast of a song which will make you smile in case you dig Spacemen 3, The Stooges and The Smashing Pumpkins

Provided to YouTube by DistroKidVoodoo Dance Ritual · GaardensVoodoo Dance Ritual℗ GaardensReleased on: 2024-06-01Auto-generated by YouTube.

19/06/2024

Currently mixing a funky, psychedelic tune by guitar magician Peter Ebbesens project. This is how it went down a few days ago when one man army Jeremy "Gonzofar" Troy dropped by to record vocals.

Maia joined the party with her phone which was quite lucky as getting footage ain't easy when dealing with a few thousand k***s and faders.

11/06/2024

Not sure it's socially acceptable to have this kind of fun with another mans organ...

Quite sure the power supply is in good worker order which wasn't the case on last power up when it blew smoke after years of neglect.
Now, take this thing away from me ASAP or it ends in arpeggio fuelled insomnia. Moon lighting with repairs can be a dangerous side hustle.

01/06/2024

More than pleased to share the first Gaardens single from the upcoming album "Noise" - this is some of the best music I ever had the honor of producing and mixing

Provided to YouTube by DistroKidVoodoo Dance Ritual · GaardensVoodoo Dance Ritual℗ GaardensReleased on: 2024-06-01Auto-generated by YouTube.

17/05/2024

Note to self: mediocre musicians shouldn’t ever try to nail the perfect bass after months of barely touching a stringed instrument. Another note to self: don’t ever fall in love with the sound of an abused 70s Japanese bass with ridiculously high action unless you got the muscle strength of an adult grizzly bear.

Sounds f**king good though, almost done.

11/05/2024

On the 1st of June "Voodoo Dance Ritual", the lead single from the beast of an album that Gaardens recorded with yours truly will be released. Never worked so hard on anything my entire life, but well worth it when the songs and musicianship are top shelf and there's a fellow workaholic with an absurd sense of humor involved; Gaardens' boss Kristian Nørregaard is a bona fide visionary f**ker and my brain had to work full power to make it happen, but we made it.

If you ever wondered what working for about a week on recording one song, looks like on paper from a technical point of view, here's the answer. This song would've taken up about 60 to 80 tracks on a DAW or a major scale 90's production with synced up 24-track tape machines, but with a hard ceiling of 24-tracks the work around is bouncing tracks internally and sub mixing multi miced sources like kick and snare directly to tape.

20/04/2024

New single from Jeremy Troy, one of the most skilled and creative musicians I've met in my life. Playground Music had enough sense to sign him which is one of the only sane decisions made by a mainstream label since the f**king 80's.

Usually I can only be assed to share music that was more or less recorded/mixed/produced by yours truly, mostly to avoid confusion about credits, but this is a great song and Jeremy is a very good producer in his own right who's more than capable at making a killer sound without a grumpy old bastard with fancy toys.

Our studios reside in the same building and we're brothers in the international fellowship of nocturnal workaholics, so we sometimes keep each other sane when fatigue kicks in.

▶️ Stream / Download: https://jeremytroy.ffm.to/babyimyourbeast☛ Follow ↓ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancient.jeremytroyFacebook: https://www.facebo...

12/04/2024

Peter Ebbesen is a bona fide expert in the weirdest side of the 70s and he’s backed up by two of the best musicians in Denmark; Simon Jensen on drums and Jonas Stampe on bass. They recorded some excellent jams yesterday and will be back for more in 30 mins.

31/03/2024

When the improvised and hungover pre-production coffee with a buddy turns into a killer vocal track.
Probably only happens if you’re dealing with Jeremy f**king Troy though 😎

23/03/2024

Yesterday an old mate went all the way from rural western Jutland where dragons roam to record some filthy blues with proper lyrics and a dobro guitar.

Havn't tried recording such a f**ker before, but thanks to good musicianship, 2x AKG C460B's in XY and a DI signal it wasn't nearly as difficult as expected.
Normally I hate DI on acoustic guitars, but in this case it came in handy as a centre point in the stereo image providing low frequency consistency between the hard panned mics and a platform for some heavy handed 1176-compression and hot levels to tape while leaving the main signal from the mics only slightly compressed in order to preserving the intensity and dynamics of the performance.
Definitely wanna do this again.

Soon there'll be exciting news as the album by Gaardens just came back from mastering at Black Tornado Studio and Lars did a killer job with his high end setup which include a Fairchild 670 limiter that cost about the same as a new Mercedes.
Can't wait to share this album with you... great songs, great performances and no effort or expense spared in chasing a production style that is somewhere in between major label 70's and 80's records and My Bloody Valentine.

20/03/2024

Guess the mix is about done now. Another song by Ymer, sounds like Hawkwind with better musicians.

Obviously that called for lots of compressors and gates so here’s the dark side of the console.

22/01/2024

Cable Hell Studio are now offering transfers of finished mixes to the Studer B67 tape machine and back to digital, starting at 300 kroner..

Your songs are almost ready for release, the mixes sound good and all you need is mastering but you keep on having second thoughts about subtle details such as "ain't the high frequencies a hair too hard sounding" and "the bass don't really seem to have enough weight to it"?
In that case your mix might benefit for a transfer to tape: the Studer B67 sounds f**king great, got a mean low end, silky highs, very low noise, very subtle if levels are kept reasonable but can also add some filth if you push the f**ker well beyound its intended operating level.
In addition to the subtle mojo of pro tape itself this machine also got transformers in and out which adds to the sonics.

Admittedly digital recordings have matured and in the right hands it can sound bloody good (rarely on drums though...) but real tape and transformers got something going that can't be replicated in a DAW no matter how many trendy emulation plugins you buy.

Lots of work has been put into getting this beast in great condition and had loads of parts replaced for brand new quality components over the last two years. When something was out of my league I had Christian of Kronborg Elektronik deal with it and he's without a doubt the best tech of his generation.
This machine is calibrated on a weekly basis and I'll change the tape formulation if the music calls for it. Normally I'll run RTM SM468 as its such a classic sound, but if you want a slightly more modern sound or your music got a huge dynamic range where noise can become an issue its no biggie to set it up for a different formula.

Prices are starting at 300 kroner for one song... a 100 kroner per song from then on if you send them at the same time.
Would recommend doing this before mastering, not after, as the process will add a decibel or two around the 50 hz region which usually sounds great, but you should give your mastering engineer a fair chance to tweak the fine details of the low end which is one of the reasons why you hopefully pay him or her a reasonable fee 😎

Anyhow... pretty easy on your end: send me the WAV files on Wetransfer to [email protected] and let me know what sample and bitrate you want. If you don't tell me otherwise I'll make it high resolution at 96 khz/24 bit.

Adresse

Åbogade 36
Aarhus
8200

Telefon

+4526784652

Internet side

http://www.cablehellstudio.dk/

Underretninger

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Videoer

Currently mixing a funky, psychedelic tune by guitar magician Peter Ebbesens project. This is how it went down a few days ago when one man army Jeremy "Gonzofar" Troy dropped by to record vocals. Maia joined the party with her phone which was quite lucky as getting footage ain't easy when dealing with a few thousand knobs and faders.

Organ arpeggios after power supply repair

Not sure it's socially acceptable to have this kind of fun with another mans organ... Quite sure the power supply is in good worker order which wasn't the case on last power up when it blew smoke after years of neglect. Now, take this thing away from me ASAP or it ends in arpeggio fuelled insomnia. Moon lighting with repairs can be a dangerous side hustle.

Not sure it's socially acceptable to have this kind of fun with another mans organ. Quite certain the power supply is in good worker order now which wasn't the case on last power up when it blew smoke after years of neglect. Now, get this f**ker away from me ASAP or it ends in arpeggio fuelled insomnia.

When the improvised and hungover pre-production coffee with a buddy turns into a killer vocal track. Probably only happens if you’re dealing with Jeremy f**king Troy though 😎

Random drum sound flex. But to be fair it ain't that hard with a drummer like James Jones of Gaardens, a Supraphonic snare and proper mics. This is from the first song of the forthcoming album.