Ask any musician what matters most in a recording and they'll likely tell you quality. In an age when entire albums can be recorded on personal laptops, there's still a demand for doing things the old fashioned way: recording in a dedicated studio space with professional equipment and an engineer who knows that equipment intimately.
It's with that in mind that Arlyn Studios owners Fred and Lisa Fletcher, along with new partners Will Bridges and T. Murphey, have spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours breathing new life into an Austin recording studio that's been around since the 1980s.
Musician, producer and entrepreneur Fred Fletcher founded Arlyn Studios in 1984. His uncle, Willie Nelson, convinced him to establish the recording studio adjacent to the Austin Opera House — a live music venue that attracted the likes of Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM. Although the Opera House, which was owned by Nelson and Tim O'Connor, closed its doors in the 90s, Arlyn Studios remained.
For the past 10 years, the Fletchers booked the studio exclusively to an audio engineering school. Earlier this year, they decided it was time to reclaim the facility off South Congress, and revive its original purpose as a world-class professional recording studio. "Freddy had always said, 'I want to take Arlyn back.' It was never a lack of desire. It was timing and I think the thing that pushed it over the edge was Will and T.," Lisa Fletcher explains.
Will Bridges learned about Arlyn Studios in 2008 after his parents met the Fletchers at a party. Along with childhood friend and fellow entrepreneur, T. Murphey, it was always Bridges' dream to run a recording studio in Austin. Bridges contacted Fred Fletcher to discuss his interest in relaunching Arlyn; Fletcher, who was heavily involved in developing ACL Live at the Moody Theater at the time, told Bridges to call him in a few years.
Earlier this year, the stars aligned and a partnership was born between the Fletchers, Bridges and Murphey, and a plan to bring Arlyn back to its roots, while giving it some modern updates, finally took shape.
"We have pretty much gutted it, equipment- and building-wise," Lisa Fletcher explains. The result is three separate studios: A, B and C. Studio A offers full-on-tracking, overdub and mixing capabilities; studio B is more geared towards overdubs and mixing but also has tracking capabilities; and studio C offers a video editing suite for film post-production.
Studio A is the largest and will feature what the Arlyn partners are most excited about — a custom-made super console designed by Fred Hill.
"People that are passionate about their art know they are capturing the music forever — and they want it to be good. It's the desire for it to be badass that is driving the renaissance back to the big rooms and big machines because they just sound better." - Will Bridges
"We had a vintage API here at Arlyn. Out at Pedernales, we had a vintage Neve. They are being married to each other with a custom center section that will combine the two. It's literally going to be the one of its kind," she says.
In addition to API and Neve, the studio will also offer SSL. Fletcher says the three represent the Ferrari, Lamborghini and Mercedes of the audio world.
Bridges says artists have pushed the limit on what they can do on their own recording wise, and now many are returning to more traditional recording methods to get a warmer sound and higher quality, making the timing of this renovation perfect.
"People that are passionate about their art know they are capturing the music forever — and they want it to be good. It's the desire for it to be badass that is driving the renaissance back to the big rooms and big machines because they just sound better. At the end of the day, nobody can really argue that."
Fletcher adds, "We're taking it to a new level in every way - the building, the equipment. We'll be up there with the world class studios in New York, LA and Nashville, but because we're in Austin Texas, we can still do it for less." Arlyn will have the capacity to have two artists in at the same time and each will have their own studio, kitchenette, lounge and entrance.
The studio's past client roster is long and impressive, including Bonnie Raitt, Frank Sinatra, Indigo Girls, Sublime, Neil Young, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Willie Nelson. Fletcher says while they hope the revamped studio continues to attract big names, it will also provide options to artists with more limited resources.
"Because we now have two unique spaces, we will be able to offer different packages," she explains. "If a band can't afford this whole studio, there will be options where if something is not booked on a given day they could set up live and do a lower price point, and not get access to everything, but still have a top notch studio."
Bridges says he hopes Arlyn Studios will elevate the Austin music scene by filling a void — the traditional commercial studio that provides a big blank canvas that let's artists "do their thing."
"We want to be accessible to the local bands, but we also want to attract the biggest artists in the world. We want there to be no excuses why they can't work in Austin Texas... 200 Academy used to be a famous address and we all want to get it back on the map."
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The first sessions in Studio B start December 6th. Studio A is slated to be up and running in January.
The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.
Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.
After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.
It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.
One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.
Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.
Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.
Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.
