Nick Wood
Audio Engineer & Music Producer
It takes a long time to realise a dream. I’ve been in the studio business for a few years now, since 2003 to be precise. Cutting my teeth on a portastudio in the mid 80’s I finally started my first studio when I bought my own house around 1995 and boarded out my cellar and bought a second hand Studiomaster desk and Tascam 38 reel to reel 8 track tape recorder which I have to this day. Soon outgrowing the cellar I rented a small industrial unit with a partner and in 2003 Broadwood Music Productions was formed in Newington in Kent.
The Newington studio was great to learn the ropes of recording, mixing, mastering, and composition, not to mention business. It soon became apparent that the relatively small size and situation meant I couldn’t grow as a business. It was at a party in around 2012 that a friend and me discussed the possibility of building something on his property. He had a self contained area of land with its own driveway that led to some dilapidated stables that he really wanted to develop. Discussions were had and eventually, in 2015, planning permission was passed to allow for the conversion of stables into two holiday let style chalets and a bespoke building for a studio. There were very many more hurdles and problems to overcome before work could commence including planning conditions that had to be met, problems with final planning and then…Covid. It wasn’t until October 2021 when diggers finally arrived to clear the site.
Still more problems, logistical and otherwise, delayed work further but eventually work began in earnest to get the buildings up. That was when the real fun started, putting the vision in my head into design reality. I had free rein with a good sized space to see what I could come up with. I already had most of the equipment needed, I had purchased my lovely SSL AWS900 mixing console in my last year at the previous studio so It was just a case of placement. I will detail the design process in other blogs but finally, in sept 2023, work began on the studio internals. The studio finally had its first use in may 2025 mainly work to test out functionality and opened for business in June that year.
So, from it’s first conception at that party in 2012 it would take 13 years for Oastview Studio to be a solid reality. If you would like to know more about the build journey look out for more blog posts in my studio build series!
