Nashville, TN (May 2, 2018)—MOXE, a creative retreat and recording studio helmed by multi-instrumentalist and producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin located in the woods on the north side of Nashville, has opened with a 40-input Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console looking down on the picturesque live room.
Designed, owned and operated by all women, MOXE is “a bit of a specialized place”, according to Hamlin. The building contains not only the large central live room, but a variety of isolation booths and “reverb rooms,” each with its own distinctive sonic character.
According to Hamlin, “We spent a year or more designing a different, custom console build, and all of a sudden, that plan fell apart. In a moment of feeling discouraged about losing so much time and energy, I called my friend Aaron Hedden and he immediately knew what to do. Twenty minutes later, I was on the phone with Josh [Thomas, general manager] at Rupert Neve Designs, and all the testing and deliberating and comparing of the past year crystalized. In that moment, I knew that the 5088 was the right desk for us.”
The first 24 mono input channels in MOXE’s 5088 console are accompanied by 24 Shelford 5052 mic preamp/EQ modules; eight additional stereo input channels complete the package.
“The console sounds pretty dreamy,” according to Hamlin. “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 color 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 means vocals at 5:30 a.m., sometimes it means tracking in pajamas, and sometimes it means morning coffee in the hot tub in the woods,” says Hamlin.
Rupert Neve Designs • www.rupertneve.com
