Soup Studio / The Duke of Uke.

I heard some bad news yesterday concerning the uncertain future of what is almost certainly the best place in record music in London, Soup Studio.

In a textbook example of that horrible process whereby useful and creative ventures raise an area’s ‘appeal’ to the extent that those very ventures find themselves kicked out on their arse to make space for the same identikit commercial crap that people initially went there to avoid, the studio and it’s upstairs neighbour The Duke of Uke are being evicted from their E1 address by the landlord, who seemingly reckons he can now use the space to harvest more cash than mere rent can provide; exactly the same fate that befell The Spitz venue & restaurant down the road a few years back, and what apparently used to be a far more worthwhile incarnation of Spitalfields Market a few years before that.

Anyway, as mentioned, Soup is a brilliant place with a great, no-nonsense set up, and Simon Trought is both a skilled engineer and a lovely chap. To have a space in the middle of London where bands at any level of ability and notoriety can go to get quality recordings of their tunes done efficiently on a variety of nice equipment for reasonable rates, in a welcoming, relaxed environment in which no one is ever sneered at or made to feel dumb, is an absolute godsend.

The fact that I, an avowed hater of ukuleles, should essentially be campaigning to save a ukulele shop hopefully tells you something about the overall goodness of this place (and in fairness, it must be said that the staff and customers of the ukulele shop have always proved very friendly too, helping to dispel the unholy terror and rage that inevitably overwhelms me at the thought of having to traverse a room containing about five hundred ukuleles).

So yeah – I’m not quite sure what the likely future of Soup is at the moment, or how entwined it is liable to be with the future of the Duke of Uke, but… let’s just say that if in recent years you’ve enjoyed recordings by the likes of Comet Gain, Herman Dune, The Loves, The Wave Pictures, Darren Hayman, Veronica Falls or Let’s Wrestle, you could do worse than expressing your appreciation by donating some cash to help The Duke secure a new home. That is all.

Labels: announcements, appeals, bad news