The short version
- Nemo Studios was on the top floor of a former school building in Hampden Gurney Street, near Marble Arch in London. It was built for one man, and it was never for hire.
- From Heaven and Hell in September 1975 to Rapsodies in 1986, Vangelis's London albums and film scores were made there.
- Every keyboard was wired through to the tape machine, and the tape kept rolling while he played without stopping.
- Vangelis left England in 1987. The building was later knocked down, and flats went up in its place.
Sessions usually started at about three in the afternoon. They stopped when there was a sensible place to stop, which tended to be somewhere between two and four in the morning. While an album was under way it went on like that seven days a week, for as long as three months at a stretch. That was the working day as Nemo's engineer Keith Spencer-Allen described it to Sound On Sound in 1997, in a back street a short walk from Marble Arch, in the middle of London.
An old school near Marble Arch
Vangelis's story is told in Vangelis: where to start. The guide notes that in 1975 he set up a sixteen-track studio called Nemo at Marble Arch and called it his laboratory. This is the story of that room.
The address was Hampden Gurney Street. According to Sound On Sound, Nemo took up the top floor of Hampden Gurney Studios, a former school. It was a big space: the studio itself was 23 feet by 44, with a 20-foot ceiling, and the control room alone was around 430 square feet.
The record company paid for it. Ralph Denyer's two-part feature in the British magazine Sound International, in December 1978 and January 1979, reported that Vangelis used the advance from a four-album deal with RCA to build it. The desk and the sixteen-track machine came from Command Studios. The rooms had been used for making advertising films, and it was a private studio: you could not book time there. In the feature Vangelis says they try to catch the magic moment, but never know when it is going to come.
The first album was made before the builders had finished. When he recorded Heaven and Hell in September 1975, there were still workmen in the building. That story is in the review of the album.
- Where
- Hampden Gurney Street, London W1, near Marble Arch; top floor of a former school building
- In use
- 1975 to 1987
- First recording
- Heaven and Hell, September 1975
- Size
- studio 23 x 44 feet, 20-foot ceiling; control room about 430 square feet
- Equipment
- sixteen-track at first; a 36-channel desk and a new tape machine from late 1978
- Engineers
- Alan Lucas (1975), Keith Spencer-Allen (from 1975), Raphael Preston, Raine Shine, Jess Sutcliffe (1984 to 1986)
- Today
- demolished, with flats on the site
A room where the tape never stopped
What mattered most at Nemo was the wiring. Sound On Sound explains that every keyboard ran through the desk to the multitrack, so that as Vangelis worked through a theme he could move to any instrument he liked without stopping. Recording went on like that for days, reel after reel. On some albums, the number of edits in the two-inch tape ran to three figures.
Vangelis put it more simply. "Then I just push the tape," he told Keyboard magazine in 1982, "and it happens when it happens." That is the play-it-once method the guide describes. The people in the room also remember that it rarely ended with one take. Parts were overdubbed and the tape was cut and spliced. Improvise, then capture it: that was a day at Nemo.
The film work was done in the same room. The engineer Raphael Preston recalled in 1997 that when they recorded Chariots of Fire there was no sync between the video and the tape machine, so they worked from visual cues.
What was made there
Going by the album credits on Discogs, Nemo's twelve years are more or less Vangelis's London years. First came the four albums for RCA: Heaven and Hell in 1975, Albedo 0.39 in 1976, Spiral in 1977 and Beaubourg in 1978. Then China, Opéra sauvage and See You Later. Short Stories, made with Jon Anderson, also carries a Nemo credit.
The film scores of the eighties came from here too. The Chariots of Fire album says it was recorded at Nemo Studios. Blade Runner did not come out on record until 1994, and in his note for that release Vangelis wrote that the music came from recordings he made in London in 1982. Antarctica carries a Nemo credit as well. In 1984 he recorded Soil Festivities and Mask there, and in 1986 Rapsodies, with Irene Papas.
The engineers change with the years. Alan Lucas recorded Heaven and Hell; from late 1975 Keith Spencer-Allen ran the control room. Raphael Preston and Raine Shine are on Chariots of Fire, and Jess Sutcliffe is credited from 1984 to 1986.
After
In 1987 Vangelis left England. The credits on his next album, Direct, name Sound Studios in Athens. In 1997 Sound On Sound told its readers that anyone who went looking for Hampden Gurney Studios would find a block of flats instead. The old building had been demolished after he left.
How to listen
- Play the first and the last records he made there back to back: Heaven and Hell, then Rapsodies. Eleven years in the same room.
- Loud. As the guide says, this was sound made to fill a room.
- Listen for the places where one piece runs into the next without a break. That is a room where the tape never stopped.
The one track to send a friend
Send "Titles", the opening track of Chariots of Fire, a little over 3 minutes. Then tell them this: it was recorded on the top floor of an old school in a back street by Marble Arch, in a studio nobody else could hire. The building is not there any more.
Where to get it
Two records to start with: the first Nemo album and the best known. Heaven and Hell first appeared on RCA in 1975, and Chariots of Fire on Polydor in 1981. Put one on and turn it up. On the top floor by Marble Arch, the lights were still on at three in the morning.
