Designed, owned and operated by women, MOXE is ‘a bit of a specialised place’. Set in the woods on the north side of Nashville, MOXE is a newly-opened creative retreat and recording studio established by multi-instrumentalist and producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin. Overlooking the picturesque live room in the centre of the building sits a 40-input RND 5088 console.
‘We spent a year or more designing a different, custom console build, and all of a sudden, that plan fell apart,’ Hamlin recalls. ‘Feeling discouraged about losing so much time and energy, I called my friend Aaron Hedden and, 20 minutes later, I was on the phone with Josh [Thomas, General Manager] at Rupert Neve Designs. All the testing and deliberating and comparing of the past year crystallised; I knew that the 5088 was the right desk for us.’
Accompanying the large central live room are a number of isolation booths and ‘reverb rooms’, each with its own distinct sonic character. ‘Most every room in the house – including the tiled master bathroom, dining room and foyer – is wired and ready for any idea. It’s been interesting to see what types of artists, engineers and producers have been drawn to this studio; I’ve been so thrilled to see that the people who are into it have the same wonder-filled relationship that I do with MOXE.’
Supported by Atomic SixTen and Adam A7X studio monitoring, a wealth of classic outboard and microphone options, the console’s first 24 mono input channels are accompanied by 24 Shelford 5052 mic preamp/EQ modules with eight additional stereo input channels completing the package. ‘The console sounds pretty dreamy,’ Hamlin reports. ‘I particularly love the first blush of hearing the initial sounds of a project come through the desk.
‘With the 5088, I’m doing so much less work “correcting” sounds, because they’re coming in sounding great – and somehow cohesive – from the start. That really frees me up to spend time on more creative decisions in the sonics rather than compensational or reparative. But when I want to really colour it, it already has some pretty interesting and exciting paths to do that too.’
One of MOXE’s first large projects was a new record for Lucy Wainwright Roche, where Hamlin and other collaborators ‘holed up’ in the immersive space and lived in the studio during tracking. ‘Sometimes that meant vocals at 5:30am, sometimes it meant tracking in pyjamas, and sometimes it meant morning coffee in the hot tub in the woods. So much of the process of making and releasing a record feels like an overwhelming and uphill battle, so any time we can carve out moments like that, it’s total magic for me.’
