Kid Koala

Deltron 3030, Rehearsals, Studio time!

Added 2023-09-07 17:15:11 +0000 UTC

Hey Everyone!

Just wanted to touch base and share a few clips and pics from The Glue Factory studios in San Francisco.

Glue Factory is the name of Dan the Automator's studio in San Francisco. Originally, we were going to rehearse in Oakland at the Hieroglyphics warehouse but we needed more turntables so instead we're here in the actual mini gym at Dan's place. LOL.

I had to set up his turntables on the floor because there wasn't a table to set up on. These are the 3 turntables we could cobble together out of Dan's house.

Dan's original studio was in the attic of his parents house when he was just starting out in music. He had glued a bunch of boards to the walls and ceiling to help soundproof and treat the room to try to get the best sound. Apparently it smelled like glue so he called it the Glue Factory.

The current Glue Factory is another building in the Mission district of San Francisco. There is a plethora of esoteric music and sound equipment that he has collected over the years. This is Dan's main production tool when he was starting. A 12 bit sampler designed by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits. He made the Dr. Octagon album on this.

Here are some very bizarre tape machines he found. They sound amazing and he has used them most recently on the work he's doing with The Black Keys and Beck.

This is the analog mixing desk in one of the rooms. This was the board that DJ Shadow mixed his Endtroducing album on. It's a fun board and made by Otari. I got to spend some time working on this board many years ago when I brought the Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs album here to do the final mix.

Finally, the Supernova pictured in the center here is an oil can delay. It uses a tin can that is slighty filled with electrolytic oil. Inside, the can there is also a spinning disc that electrifies the oil, which then sloshes and around and comes back through the pick up, giving a very sci-fi surreal rotating / leslie speaker type of tone. It's very dusted sounding. I have a similar oil can delay in my studio and use it whenever I can. An example of this type of effect is on 3 bit Blues when the synth sound repeats into outer space-ace-ace-ace-ace...