Sarm East Studios

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Sarm East Studios is a recording studio that was located on Osborn Street at the southern end of Brick Lane in east London.[1]

History[]

Background[]

The building at 9-13 Osborn Street in Aldgate had housed The City of London Recording Studios,[1] which recorded radio programs and narration for newsreels from 1960 until going out of business in 1972. Shortly thereafter, Gary Lyons and Barry Ainsworth, two recording engineers who had been operating a tape copying service called Sound and Recording Mobiles, purchased the facility and named it using an acronym of their business name, opening SARM in July 1973.[2]

Studio[]

The studio was established by Jill Sinclair and her brother John Sinclair [3] with engineers Gary Lyons and Mike Stone.

In 1975, Queen recorded sections of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "The Prophet’s Song" at SARM, and filmed the video for "Somebody to Love" at the studio the following year.[4] The band returned to SARM in summer 1977 to record portions of their album News of the World, including the hit song "We Are the Champions"[5]

Producer Trevor Horn became a frequent client at SARM, and he and Sinclair married in 1980. In 1983, Sinclair and Horn founded ZTT Records and purchased Island Studios on Basing Street, rebranding it Sarm West and the original SARM studio as Sarm East.

Over the years, SARM's East London studio played host to artists such as The Buggles, Yes, Dollar, ABC, Nik Kershaw, Art of Noise, Rush, and Billy Squier.

The studios later became part of Sinclair and Horn's holding company, SPZ Group. Sarm East closed in the late 1990s, but SPZ group continues the Sarm Studio legacy with Sarm Music Village.

Equipment[]

In the mid 1970s, Sarm was one of the first 24-track recording studios in England; it later became the first with 48-track facilities.[6]

In 1978, Sarm suffered extensive water damage and underwent a major renovation, including a control room redesign and the largest Trident TSM console built to date, with Allison automation system. At the same time, the 3M and MCI multitrack tape machines were replaced by a pair of Studer A80s (to be replaced later by Studer A800 Mk IIIs) with Dolby A.

In 1982, Sarm East was one of the first studios in London to install an early Solid State Logic 4000E mixing console.

Sarm's outboard equipment included an Eventide H910 Harmonizer, Lexicon 224 digital reverb, UREI 1176 compressors, and AMS digital delay.[2]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b "Our History". SARM Music Village. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
  2. ^ a b Massey, Howard (2015). The Great British Recording Studios. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US: Hal Leonard Books. ISBN 978-1-4584-2197-5. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  3. ^ John Sinclair discography at Discogs
  4. ^ Bennett, John G (2009). A Journey Through Whitechapel and Spitalfields (PDF). Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications. p. 45. ISBN 978-1905512546. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
  5. ^ "Mercury Paradise Audio Files". Mercuryparadise.com.
  6. ^ Sefton, Jamie (20 October 2014). "Trevor Horn talks Frankie, SARM and synths". Musicradar.com. Retrieved 28 November 2014.

External links[]

Coordinates: 51°30′59″N 0°04′12″W / 51.5163°N 0.0700°W / 51.5163; -0.0700

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