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GC PRO SPOTLIGHT: The Lodge Masters More Than Mastering

The Lodge has never been a typical recording/mastering facility. From its inception in 1997, owner/chief engineer Emily Lazar used her background as a musician and composer to give her clients an extra edge over those who used engineers with a purely technical approach. As a result, The Lodge went from an unknown entity to doing masters for some of the biggest names in music in a very short time span. Emily's clients include such notables as David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jeff Buckley, Sonic Youth, Third Eye Blind, Natalie Merchant, Beyonce Knowles, Sinead O'Connor and hundreds of others. But even the most successful studios can't just rest on their laurels. Seeing the potential for expansion, The Lodge recently added to the core competency of their business by opening new facilities to serve different areas in the music/audio market. The story is best told by the people who've recently helped make The Lodge one of the most comprehensive audio service facilities on the planet.

GC Pro: We’re visiting today with Drew Stein, CEO and Neil McLellan, Record Producer (The Prodigy) and Worldwide Creative Director of The Lodge, a multi-dimensional studio complex in New York City. They have just opened a new production facility in New York and another in London. Drew, why don’t you just give us a little background about how The Lodge came to be and what it’s all about.

Drew Stein: The Lodge was founded by Emily Lazar in 1997.. Originally we started as a mastering facility, but over the years, we’ve moved into specialized recording, mixing and producing as well. Given our creative process and the unusual talents of our engineering staff, the expansion was very natural. Emily is an accomplished musician and singer/songwriter with a very strong compositional background. What she’s been able to add to records has been so much more than what the traditional mastering engineer offers and always from the perspective of the artist. So, the roots of our growith were a natural progression and something that had sort of been happening anyway as we got more and more involved in the creative side of each album we mastered.

Moreover, mastering is the last line of defense to get the album right from a creative standpoint. When an artist comes in, they want a full-service studio. If they have to remix a song, if they have to re-track a vocal, if they have to overdub a guitar part, you need to have a facility that allows them to do that. Being involved on the creative side of mastering means that in some cases it’s EQ and volume and all the traditional meanings of what mastering is and, on the less traditional side, it means actually getting involved and helping take the album to the next level. So now we have these studios and the facilities to get involved from basic tracking to full-on mixing. We also have an amazing compositional staff to the extent a record calls for it.

GC Pro: So, it sounds like a creative and incredibly different take on the whole traditional role of the mastering engineer, as opposed to just putting the finishing touches on something, you’re involved much earlier in the process. It could be from the beginning, it could be from overdubbing or adding strings. It’s a really unique approach.

NM: I was tuned in to Emily in 1997 by some friends in London that had heard about this amazing lady mastering engineer that was just absolutely out of this world. So I came over, and to this day, I’m absolutely amazed at the level of detail that the Lodge was able to point out in my recordings. Now, the interesting thing that The Lodge did for me was the fact that they had a full-scale Pro Tools room adjoining the mastering suite. This is fully tie-lined up to the mastering suite itself. The really important point about this is that when I took my masters over to New York, I also brought stems. Do you know what stems are?

GC Pro: Yes

NM: Okay. So I’d always bring the stems. I’d always break up the mixdown into stems. Once the mastering process was underway, there would always be a little tweak. Emily has amazing hearing. She’s got the most amazing… what we say in the UK is luggs, l-u-g-g-s, which are your ears. She’s got the most amazing luggs in the world. I’ve never, ever come across anyone that listens to music with such fine detail and musicality. As opposed to just the technical skills, she also understands and is very sympathetic towards the message that you’re trying to get across in your music.

She would then say, "Why don’t you go next door, pull up the stems and just bring a certain part of the music up a little bit," whether it’s a lead instrument or whether it’s the bass line or whether it’s the kick drum. I’d eventually stem out all my mixes, and I’d have the ability, right at that point in time when most people don’t have the ability to do that, because I’m so confident in the skill and artistry of Emily. She would say, "Just bring this up a little bit. Then when I’d bring it into the mastering zone, I’ll be able to really, really pull out the music." It’s a really incredible skill. I’ve never, ever come across it before, and I’ve been doing this for twenty years.

DS: It’s true. I think part of maximizing the creative process, especially heading toward the deadline and mastering an album, is continuity of production. Having a facility that can provide that continuity absolutely furthers the creative outcome of the album.
GC Pro: The product is going to be that much better as a result of it.

DS: There’s no doubt about it. Being able to be in the same place… the one-stop shop… it’s a different a mindset. It’s an amazing thing to be able to provide to artists.

NM: The artist really feels good when they… look, a lot of artists, when they come to mastering, they feel very nervous because they think, "Oh god, I wish I’d fixed that, I wish I’d done this, I wish I’d done that." And they feel very much like they’ve been let go in free-fall when they hit the mastering, in normal mastering places.

GC Pro: They’re stuck with what they’ve got at that point.

NM: Right. But The Lodge was so accommodating. They’d always take care of it. They’d always have this incredible attention to detail. When it’s your little baby, and you have that attention to detail, you expect everybody else to. In the normal world unfortunately, it’s not the case. But at The Lodge, it’s absolutely amazing and astounding, the level and the attention to detail that they give us.

DS: I think when you sit across from Emily or anybody at The Lodge, you’re not sitting next to someone that’s uni-dimensional. Every person on the staff has a multidisciplinary music background. For instance, Neil is our worldwide creative director. He’s also a very established record producer, and has produced everything from the Prodigy to Erasure to Nine Inch Nails. So the types of people that are working on your album at The Lodge are very different than your average place. So I think when you look at the multi-dimensions of the people who are working on every project here, we need a facility that …

GC Pro: …is flexible enough to do all that.

DS: Right. I think for us, it’s about working with artists to produce the best possible creative outcome. For us, it’s about being a facility that can support that, and that can deliver on that for them. The artists come first, and the given that the artistry of making an album is uni-dimensional, so should be the facility and the people making that album with you.

GC Pro: Especially today, the way music production is evolving, and how it’s recorded. Drew, how would you describe your ideal client? At this point, would you guys like to be involved from the very beginning, or are you ready to jump in at any point in a project.

DS: I think it really is up to the artist. I think there’s going to be some artists that will be excited to be able to wok with us throughout the creative process, and I think there’s some artists who will be more comfortable dealing in one part or another part. So it’s completely up to them. The artists come first to me, and their work comes first. And we’re just here to support their dreams. So, every client is the ideal client.

Remember, with the launch of the music production company in 2004, we have two very distinct sides of our business with two distinct client sets. Our newer clients are advertising clients, filmmakers and television networks. Our compositional staff on the music production side focuses on original scoring, sound design and licensing for television, film and advertising. Our record production side focuses on making albums for record labels and artists. So there’s two very distinct sides to the business with two very distinct client sets.

I think what’s very much the same on both sides of the business is the artistic integrity with which we approach everything..

GC Pro: So you’re very flexible in what you can provide your clients and also have a great business model for running a facility on New York City. You are very flexible as a business. You can roll with the punches and do what’s needed at the time in the business climate.

NM: As you rightfully say, we’ve got to be totally multidimensional in today’s world. You can’t just stick to one road. You’ve got to able to run all roads at all times. That’s the nature of the modern music game today.

DS: The Lodge has one of the foremost creative reputations right now on the record production side of the world. That’s in no short order due to the vision that Emily Lazar founded the company with. The creative vibe is something we work very hard to maintain.

GC Pro: Yeah, absolutely. I was in New York last week and was fortunate enough to spend some time with Scott at the new facility and get the full tour. It’s just got a great feel. Even though you’re still tightening a few things up, it’s a real Soho loft space. The lounge area, the upstairs video game loft with massage chairs. It’s just a wonderful feel. And the way everything lays out is great, can you describe a little bit how the facility is laid out and what its design functions are?

DS: I think the first and foremost thing we set out to do was building a space that was inspirational for the artists who work here. When you’re making a record, or if you’re producing a television commercial, or if you’re scoring a film, you have to find and be in an environment that can provide an exciting vibe. That can provide that electricity. Maybe we’re idealists, but we still believe in the magic that happens when you get into a studio. And when you create the right creative environment, I think it inspires people to do that much better work.

That was the first thing we set out to do. Part of that approach was how we used light, how we used the views. We went with a very untraditional approach with the amount of sunlight (laughs). Most studios are sort of dungeonous, and we went in the exact opposite route where we’ve left a lot of open spaces with windows.

GC Pro: We went around the whole place with almost no lights on, and it was just wonderful natural light wherever you went.

DS: And that was critical. There’s no room in the facility that doesn’t have some natural light coming into it.

The facility is set up, obviously, so clients can be comfortable here. So artists who are spending long periods of time making their album can have different places to relax, places for privacy, and at the same time maintain a very, very open feel. That includes having a kitchen that feels good to have breakfast in as you look out over Greenwich Village-

NM: -and the Empire State building.

DS: And when the Freedom Towers are built, we’ll have a front-row seat to those as well, which all the studios will have a direct view.

GC Pro: I was very struck by that element, and it was obviously intentional. I think the place feels wonderful. It’s very opposite to the normal studio environment… wood walls and no natural light.

NM: Hessian and hemp on the walls, and that’s it. It’s lovely when you’re a youngster…

GC Pro: Right.

NM: But it’s so lovely and refreshing to get daylight. It sounds like something very simple, but you know the score. If you’re building a recording studio with acoustics and proper acoustic treatment, to put that much amount of natural daylight in with glass windows, it’s a real challenge. We’ve had the most amazing architects and acoustic designers….

DS: The overall architect was John Hong at Single Speed Design in Boston. The studio architect and acoustic designer was Larry Swist from New York.

GC Pro: An old buddy of ours. He’s a great guy.

DS: Larry’s done an amazing job in tuning the rooms. If you want to have a first-class production studio, there’s so much more that goes into it than just the gear that’s in the racks.

We have a terrific live room. We have terrific isolation booths. We have great tie-lines over the whole facility. We can record anywhere from our live room to our lounge, which is all-glass. The acoustics are very, very specific throughout the entire facility.

NM: It’s configured variable acoustic treatments all over the facility, which you saw. This enables us to get a live recording, a dead recording, and somewhere in between.

I’d like to say one thing, the attention to detail, which the clients will never, ever see – which they should never see – is absolute. We’ve really pushed the envelope on this, right down to how we do our grounding.

DS: Yeah, it’s pretty tight. We have two eight-ton air conditioners and a 5-ton air conditioners for 5000 square feet of space. All the ducting is designed to be acoustically deadened. I mean, we have 400 amps of electricity. It makes a difference, even how you ground your electricity. All of those little details go into making a first-class production facility, and none of those were overlooked.

GC Pro: Absolutely. That’s apparent in the quality of every detail.

NM: Our studios are definitely not glorified sushi holders like most of the competition.

GC Pro: (laughs) Well that’s a good thing. What is your vision for the next room down the hall there that is not built out yet?

DS: That’s going to be another mixing and production studio. All told, we’ll have three full-on production studios at Varick, three at our Astor location and on in London.

GC Pro: That’s ambitious.

DS: Plus the live room.

GC Pro: Excellent. (to Neil) Give me a little bit of your background. You said you met Emily through mastering. What year was that?

NM: That would have been 1997.

GC Pro: Right when she opened.

NM: Right when she opened, absolutely. I’d heard about Emily in London. I was working with an American band called Into Another. They’d heard about this amazing lady in New York. So, being a Brit and getting the chance to a) go off to New York… I had never actually worked with her before. So I thought, "What the hell? Let’s give it a go." I can honestly say from that day forward to now, everything I’ve ever produced and mixed and what have you have gone through The Lodge. I can’t believe the quality of the work.

NM: I’ve just finished the forthcoming Prodigy album.

GC Pro: That’s what Scott said. He said it’s absolutely killer.

NM: It’s called Always Outnumbered but Never Outgunned. It’s taken me two years, personally, to make this album a reality. I believe it’s going to one of the incredible albums of this year to come out of the UK.

GC Pro: When did you become involved as a part of the business?

NM: Drew and Emily approached me in early 2004 and I had a company which was already involved with the composition of music commercials in the UK called Phatadcow. They just said to me, "Look, why don’t you come over to New York, and we can do something that has never been done before."

DS: The Lodge has made four acquisitions over the past six months, including Phatadcow in London, Eric Kaye Music in New York City, Right Hook Productions in New York City, and Elegant 2 Productions. So, we have a veteran staff of composers and music producers here who are veteran both in the record production world as well as the advertising, film scoring and television world.

GC Pro: Excellent. And I saw that on the web site for the music production side, you also list London. Do you still have a facility there that you operate out of?

NM: That is correct. We’ve got a great facility there which is not as large as The Lodge here. It’s up in Stoke Newington and it’s just a great space. It’s very similar to this in terms of the views, looking over London. It’s got a great live area. We have a lot of compositional skills out of there.

DS: We have several composers who still work out of London.

NM: And they are tonmeisters as well, so they’re unbelievable classical guys.

GC Pro: You probably have fiber-optic tie-lines under the ocean soon so you can connect to that place.

DS: (laughs)

NM: Well, iChat seems to rock at the moment, man (laughs).

GC Pro: Actually it does. The technology is pretty amazing for shrinking the globe these days.

NM: Well, it’s interesting, because I talk to all of our composers over the iChat link using the iSight camera. It’s an amazing way of file transferal, and being able actually see the guys working away. It’s very, very cool. If I’m talking to London, it’s great for them to be able to see me, and I can see them at 30 frames a second. They can also transfer files whilst I’m chatting away to them.

DS: For us, the technology side has been important because it has allowed us to bring together an amazing team from all over the world. The disciplines of recording an album, the attention to detail, the touch of the people making those albums are not typically the types of people you see scoring television commercials and scoring films. One of the things that we thought would, in terms of raising the bar, industry-wide, was to be able to bring the same care and the same creative principles of making a record to the scoring world. And that’s something that’s been incredibly successful for us in a very short amount of time. We owe much of that to the technology making our world much smaller.

GC Pro: That’s really exciting.

NM: If I could just add to his point there … let’s say I’m working with a very minor band, and they haven’t broken it yet, and I’m very keen to make sure that they make it into the grown-up’s world, as it were. It’s very important that I get the same level of service for an unknown band as opposed to an established band that have sold a gazillion records. At the Lodge, the thing that really impressed me and still impresses me to this day is that you can be an indie label selling 5,000, 500, 10,000 copies. Or you can be Lou Reed or David Bowie, and the level of care and attention one gets is exactly the same. There is no difference. They really, really have that wonderfully down.

GC Pro: That’s fantastic. That’s extremely important. That’s the mark of a real world-class facility in my opinion.

DS: And it’s the same care that we bring to our advertising clients. You have to bring the same quality to Grey Advertising or to Young & Rubicam that you would to David Bowie or Lou Reed or any of the big name artists that come through our doors.

That’s about artistic integrity, quite frankly. A lot of that is either ingrained in your branding and your reputation, or it’s not. We have an amazingly strong foundation. We have a lot of these principals baked into our company as it grows. And we’re very fortunate to have such a strong base to grow from.
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DS: What you’re seeing is that there are a lot of worlds coming together, a lot of blurring. I think that we’re in a perfect position to capitalize on that collision course that much of the media seems to be on these days.

GC Pro: I think a lot of times that blurring is interpreted as, "Things are eroding and becoming all one", but you are, on the other hand, are embracing that-

DS: It’s even better. I think that we can help to expedite the blurring (laughs) through.the services we’re providing. We’re doing a service to all the industries we participate in right now.

GC Pro: That’s a very good point, because the people that embrace it and capitalize on it are the ones that make things happen.

DS: Ultimately the goal of all of it is to raise the creative bar, and to raise the quality bar, whether it’s record production or music production. It’s about producing the most dynamic creative product.

GC Pro: And the right vehicle to do it.

DS: Having the right vehicle to do it is certainly important. The right people and the right facilities is an important part of that.

GC Pro: So now that this new place in Soho is open and up and running, how has that changed the way that the mastering facility in Greenwich Village operates? What’s different now?

DS: We have a lot of interns running back and forth between the two (laughs).

NM: We’ve got the fittest interns in New York. They’re very, very fit. Very fast on their feet.

GC Pro: (laughs)

DS: No, there really is no difference. Other than the letterhead, there’s no difference in the way that we’re operating. Only that we’re being a lot more opportunistic. The two work hand in hand. All of the music we produced for television commercials and film and television networks, at some point, will pass through the mastering facility. That’s something that no other music production house is doing.

GC Pro: So you’re actually mastering music for a 60-second commercial?

DS: Absolutely! We are mastering every piece of music that leaves our studio.

GC Pro: And that, historically, is not usually true, right?

DS/NM (together): It’s never been done before.

GC Pro: That’s incredible.

DS: That’s the type of stewardship we’re looking to brining to the industry. It’s about taking everyone’s game to the next level. Mastered music sounds better. The quality of mastered music is better. There’s no reason why the advertising world doesn’t deserve that, creatively.

GC Pro: And the end user, ultimately.

NM: Exactly.

GC Pro: The person who’s hearing it should hear the best thing possible.

NM: You’re absolutely right.

DS: That’s one of the ways that the facilities are working together. The second way that the facilities are working together is that we’re providing lucrative licensing opportunities for some of the artists that we work with.

GC Pro: Which could lead to a whole variety of catalog material or other resources for various industries.

DS: Yes.

NM: Exactly. The one thing we do is that we’re not afraid of change. We’re embracing every aspect of the multimedia, of business… it’s changing every day.

DS: So, the two sides of the business work very closely together. The record production side of the business helps the music production side, increases and maximizes the quality of the work through the mastering that they do. The music production side provides licensing opportunities for the record production side.

GC Pro: A perfect synergy. It gives you the ability to adjust to any need and fulfill any creative process necessary, whatever it may be.

To wrap up, are there any final things you’d like to say?

DS: I would just say that it’s an incredibly exciting time for the Lodge. It’s a time of growth and expansion and we have been very fortunate to have this opportunity to bring something new to the world that hasn’t been done in building our company.

GC Pro: Neil, any final thoughts for our readers?

NM: The one thing I would say is that the Lodge itself is probably one of the most creative zones that people can come into. We put the artists first, we put the agencies first, we’re here to help, and we definitely have got something different to shout about.

GC Pro: From my perspective, just the passion and the enthusiasm and the optimism projected by you guys is really exciting. I run into so much doom and gloom in the industry these days, big studios that can’t stay booked, etc.

NM: At the end of the day, you can’t buy vibe. You know?

GC Pro: It comes from the people doing it. But the record companies and a lot of the big studios, and a lot of audio manufacturers… all kinds of people are complaining. To have this kind of passion and enthusiasm is very exciting.

NM: Thank you very much.

DS: Thank you.