London, UK. May 31st 2018: Evolution Studios in Oxford recently extended its PMC monitoring set-up to accommodate a prestigious film project that needed to be mixed in 5.1.
Producer and Evolution owner Nicholas Moorbath already had a stereo configuration of PMC twotwo.8 active reference monitors in his control room but had to add three more to accommodate surround sound mixing.
“I was very grateful to PMC who agreed to lend me the additional monitors I needed to complete this project,” Moorbath says. “I am now extending Evolution and by the end of this year I will have a permanent surround mix suite that will, of course, be equipped with twotwo8s.”
Entitled Carmilla and inspired by the Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu’s Victorian Gothic vampire novel of the same name, the film is an atmospheric coming of age love story seeped in eerie mystery. Directed by Emily Harris and starring Tobias Mensies, Jessica Raine and Greg Wise, Carmilla (2018) features music composed by Philip Selway, best known as Radiohead’s drummer.
“Philip and I have worked together in the past, so I was delighted when he brought his latest film project to Evolution,” Moorbath says. “He is an incredibly talented composer and multi-instrumentalist and we had great fun recording the Elysium string quartet, the celloist Laura Moody and various other instruments that Philip played. The score is very complex and interesting and the whole film is fantastic, with exquisite cinematography.”
Moorbath’s Evolution Studios is equipped with a Trident 80B console; mic preamps, compressors and FX from Universal Audio, SSL, TL Audio, 1960’s BBC, Lexicon, TC Electronic, etc; microphones from Neumann, Sennheiser, Rode, Beyer and Shure; an 8-core Mac Pro running the latest versions of Pro Tools and Logic with UAD 2 plug-ins and a large selection of backline including a Hammond A100. The studio, which has a large live room and four vocal booths, specialises in live work and voice recording. Since opening in 2012 it has completed music, film and computer games projects for a diverse range of bands and actors including Frank Turner, TEED, Charlie Cunningham, Ride, Fixers, Sir Ben Kingsley and Harry Shearer.
“Evolution is all about quality, and the studio monitoring is not exception,” Moorbath says. “I first came across PMC twotwo monitors during a Pro7ect annual songwriting retreat in Brighton, which PMC was sponsoring. They had equipped Pro7ect’s pop-up studios at Hotel Pelirocco with twotwo monitors and I was really impressed by their clarity and accuracy. That experience led me to order a pair of the flagship twotwo.8s for Evolution, which I chose for their smoothness and power.”
Since installing his PMC’s, Moorbath says he has found them incredibly satisfying to work with, especially on big mixes where it is important to know exactly what is going on with the sound and stereo imaging.
“They are also very non-fatiguing, which means I can spend more time in the studio,” he says. “What’s more, they have plenty of bass at low levels and very tight bottom end.”
