Photo by Annick Rosenfield
Nicolas Vernhes explains how a DIY project turned into a recording studio and a record label
By Katy Henriksen
Published: September 16th, 2008 | 11:50am
Nicolas Vernhes’ Rare Book Room — a two-story recording studio built into a former industrial space in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood — has served as the location for many of the defining indie recordings of the last decade. Deerhunter, Fiery Furnaces, Cat Power, and Animal Collective have all laid down tracks at this unassuming yellow-brick building that houses an enterprise whose evolution has become a labor of love for Vernhes.
The 38-year-old French American’s foray into recording began when his band, Babytooth, wanted to lay down an album in the mid-1990s. Vernhes became so enamored with the process of mixing, editing, and producing that he decided to make it his full-time gig. “I’m very process-oriented. I love to see and figure out how things are put together and the process of taking it from nothing to the final thing,” Vernhes explained. “It goes back to when I was in high school, and I would listen to music constantly. I just started thinking, ‘how did they do that?’”
In 1995, Vernhes found a potential recording space on Williamsburg’s South Sixth Street. “The space was at first our rehearsal space, and then I got a little bit of gear, a little recorder, and a board, and we started doing experiments,” Vernhes said. “That kind of grew into friends of mine knowing about the space and being able to record in it.”
As he amassed equipment and learned techniques while recording for friends, Vernhes discovered the technical ways an engineer could transform recordings. “I just tried to figure out how someone might go about recreating the things they like,” he said. “When putting music together, there are all these choices about how it’s going to come off once you push play.”
The first albums he credits with making a name for himself as an engineer were Versus' Deep Red and the Silver Jews’ American Water. Both recordings quickly established Vernhes as a sound engineer who could conceptualize and intuit musicians’ intentions and put those ideas into a recorded reality. “I always want what I’m doing to vanish behind the song and the artist who is singing or whoever’s doing the music,” he said, “I want the record to be the purest expression of their imagination.”
By the end of 1999, Vernhes began thinking about larger spaces for his recording studio ideas. Rare Book Room’s current location — which Vernhes purchased, renovated, and moved into in 2000 — is just off Greenpoint’s Nassau Avenue. The welcoming rooms are decorated with an eclectic mix of retro lamps and furniture that serve double duty as the DIY engineer’s home.
In February 2008, the space officially became the headquarters of Rare Book Room Recordings with the release of the two-disc compilation Living Bridge. And this week marks the label’s foray into full-length releases with Lia Ices’ Necima and Palms’ It’s Midnight in Honolulu.
“The studio itself invites warmness. And for whatever importance one puts on the energy of things — for me it’s a lot — I felt good in that room,” Lia Ices, a piano-based singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, said of the space. “It’s beautiful and expansive, while being eclectic and warm. It’s cavernous enough to supply safety, yet enlivening, simply by what it holds and all the possibilities for sound.”
Ices and Vernhes came together through a mutual friend, which is how he described meeting many of the musicians he’s worked with. “She came in here, and we talked, and then I asked her to play a couple of her songs. But she just sat there on the piano and played five songs in a row,” Vernhes said. He couldn’t get one melody out of his head, so the two soon began collaborating on what became Ices’ new album. With Necima, Vernhes layered delicate strings, percussion, and winds to Ices’ searing piano and vocals. The result is a swelling and sweeping set of melancholic songs best exemplified with opener, “Medicine Wheel,” Ices’ interpretation of the Native-American spiritual cycle.
“I think we worked so well together, because he believes in my songs just as much as I trust him in leading us through the process of recording them,” she said. “He’s open to any and all ideas, and was extremely unwearied in letting each song go through its journey.”
Nadja Korinth and Ryan Schaefer of the art-rock duo Palms, whose core sound is formed with vocals, synths, guitar, drums, and bass, also relied on Vernhes in a collaborative role. “Working with Nicolas feels really natural to us,” said Schaefer. “I can only speak for Palms’ experience; however, it seems to me he has a unique ability to understand what artists are attempting to achieve and aid them in accomplishing this, no matter what style or tone of music they are working on.”
“Palms is great, because they are not fundamentally musicians at all,” Vernhes said. “She’s a documentary filmmaker from Berlin, and Ryan is more of a visual artist. He also does interiors and displays. They’ve been friends for a long time, and when they get together they have a laptop and they just make songs.”
Vernhes is not afraid of taking risks with experimental groups like Palms. Although he has a strong vision for Rare Book Room Recordings, it’s not one bound by aesthetic constraints or particular movements. “I was in a band. You work on a song, and you bring it in, and you lose focus. The song escapes you a little bit,” he said. “The reason behind why you’re writing it gets kind of lost. I always wanted to keep that vibrant and very close to the listening experience.”
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Rare Book Room Living Bridge Compilation
Lia Ices Necima
Palms It’s Midnight in Honolulu
Issue #34
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