Kailash Khers temple

For a recording artist on the verge of global fame, few career landmarks are as potent as the establishment of a purpose-designed recording facility that exists solely for their own use. But for Kailash Kher, whose success with the band Kailasa has turned him into a superstar within India and beyond, the opening of Kailasa Studios is an altogether more spiritual affair.

Here is a singer who describes his career itself as ‘Parmatma ki Dena’ (boons given to him by the Almighty), while Kailasa Studios is for him not just a facility designed to help him and his partners in music – brothers Paresh and Naresh Kamath – to record more award-winning albums, but as a place of worship for ‘Ma Saraswati’ the Indian goddess of sur (musical pitching). Accordingly, Mr Kher refuses to wear shoes within the facility, treating it with the kind of respect usually reserved for temples.

But it should come as no surprise to those who know the singer that he feels such devotion to the studio. It is after all intended as an extension of Kailasa the band and the unlikely story of how Mr Kher rose from humble beginnings to eventually be heard within virtually every home in India. Renowned for remaining humble despite his success and famous for staying true to his rustic upbringing and the rituals with which he was raised, Mr Kher appears to treat every part of his music career as a gift, and Kailasa studio is arguably the biggest gift of all.

Impressively, it’s also a reflection of the contrast in styles that has helped to make Kailasa the band so successful. Famously, while Mr Kher was raised in rural Northen India with a strict adherence to the region’s deep rooted Hindu traditions, Paresh and Naresh Kamath spent their childhoods in cosmopolitan Bombay suburbs that are well known for their Western inclinations.

In early 2001 the Kamath brothers were a part of The Bombay Black – a community of musicians who regularly held open jam sessions at an old run down bungalow in an attempt to revive the fading local live music scene.

At that point they were chiefly interested in playing progressive alternative music, but they explored beyond their existing direction, when they heard Mr Kher sing.  Their production arrangements on his compositions opened a radically new direction for the future Sound of Kailasa.

Despite the cultural differences between them, the three men quickly forged a creative partnership which is now close to 10 years old, Kailasa having formed as a band in 2003. The resulting music is a contemporary urban fusion of Western rock influences, rustic Indian melodies and ethnic instrumentation.

Nor were the Kamath brothers the only ones fascinated by Mr Kher’s performances – during the same period, the Indian advertising industry became equally enamoured, applying his voice to countless commercials in an attempt to reach out to both urban and rustic communities.

The work quickly developed into other opportunities. Meanwhile, music producer’s Vishal & Shekhar’s ‘Allah ke Bande’ – recorded for a Bollywood film – became Mr Kher’s signature hit, winning over fans including AR Rahman. Suddenly, Kailasa found themselves in demand, netting a record deal with Sony Music, a top 10 album within India and, of course, a recording studio designed to meet their own unique criteria.

Two studios for one

One of the most striking things about Kailasa Studios, which originally opened in 2008 but has since developed considerably, is its location. When searching for a potential home for their creativity, the three partners identified a dilapidated mid-row house in Seven Bungalows, a Bombay City suburb known for its studio connections. The house was also just 200m away from a proposed new metro station. Having settled on the location, Mr Kher diverted a significant portion of his income from concert tours into building the facility of his dreams.

In fact, the result was not one studio but two. The ground floor of the building – dubbed Studio A – was completed first, alongside the concrete shell for Studio B, which would be located upstairs as and when funds permitted. Notably, it was also the only facility of its kind to require its designer Munro Acoustics to start building from five feet below ground level.

Adding further complications for Munro acoustician Kapil Thirwani were local government restrictions that limited the height of the building to nine and a half feet, leaving only a limited rectangular plot space.  Other concerns included controlling low frequency rumbles generated by the earth movers from the still-under-construction metro line, and the threat of floating floors sinking into the loose sand of the costal area.

Perhaps most importantly, they also had to ensure that Kailasa’s habit of working at night didn’t anger the neighbours, with the studio sharing two common walls with adjoining domestic properties.

But despite the challenges, Kailasa Studios is a triumph. Downstairs, Studio A’s floor area is 860 sq-ft, with the main door opening into a reception area at the front. A door on the far right opens into a 4-ft wide corridor, which also acts a common sound lock for two single doors, one opening into the control room and the other into the live room.

Inside, the side wall is treated with full-range absorbers while the back wall is outlined for curved diffusers, with bass traps placed in all the four corners. Including a dubbing booth, the recording area has been designed to facilitate variable acoustics in spite of its relatively small size of 221 sq-ft. In contrast, Studio B is larger with a greater focus on recording space as, unlike the lower floor, no kitchen facilities are required and less corridors clutter the space.

Stairs from below lead into a large live room and small balcony, while a small sound-locked room is included for Mr Kher’s use when dubbing, writing, or meditating. The entire upper-floor structure is floated on 3-inch anti-vibration floor pads mounted on to the floor, with the entire structure tuned to 12Hz.

The walls of Studio B have also been designed with angled full-range tuned membrane absorbers to the right and rear walls, while curved diffusers are used on the left sidewall to achieve a live diffused feel. Mounted on stands beside the front wall meanwhile are Dynaudio M2 monitors, complemented by tuned low frequency absorbers. Two foldable collapsible panels have also been provided to isolate loud drums and percussion instruments.

The full commissioning of Studio B has led to a change in how the Kailasa Studios building is used. Whereas the band’s award winning last album ‘Chaandan Mein’ was recorded and mixed in the ground floor studio by their in-house engineer Niraj Singh and Promod Thomas, it is now offered out on a rental basis while the band instead utilise the top floor. Partly thanks to its role in the creation of an Indian musical landmark, and partly for its acoustic virtues, Studio A has already won a lot of fans, becoming popular for its live drum sound and often becoming booked out for percussion sessions.

Equipment and wiring

With such a high profile attached to the facility from the day of its opening, it’s no surprise that the equipment used within is of an impressive standard. Kailasa boasts two Yamaha digital consoles in the shape of a DM2000 in Studio A and an O2R in the band’s first floor space. Meanwhile, both rooms run Steinberg Nuendo Version 4.3 for recording with Prism Orpheus FireWire interfaces linked to two G5 Macs. Dynaudio Acoustic custom-designed miniature M4s and BM6 near field monitors are employed downstairs, while Studio B uses Dynaudio M2s powered by Chord CPM 2600 integrated and Dynaudio T1000 amplifiers.

The studio wiring is unique and based on the design philosophy of the band’s live engineer Tejasvi Rao, who was responsible for commissioning, installing and testing with Roydon D’souza putting his plans into practice. It was Mr Rao’s idea to use the shortest, cleanest path to deliver the signal to Prism A/D converters. The three Prism Orpheus boxes firewire interfaced to the macs in studio A handle 12 Line and 12 microphone inputs and 16 Adat inputs, maximising the I/O options that are available within the control room.

The four microphone outs are wired to mic-pre amplifiers in the form of a Manley Voxbox, an AMS Neve 8801 and a Manley SLAM, each with their own respective outputs routed to the four line inputs of the first Orpheus. Four outputs from Naresh Kamash’s setup and four from Paresh Kamash’s equipment were permanently routed to the second and the third Prism respectively before they moved to Studio B. Additionally, 12 microphone outs from the recording booth are directly routed in groups of four to the three units.

The DM2000’s four slots are fitted with AES/EBU Yamaha MY-8AD/DA 96 and MY 16–AT Adat cards. The TC M6000 mainframe accepts auxiliary signals routed via the AES/EBU card, with inputs one to six used for reverb and delay processing, and inputs seven and eight dedicated to mastering. The DM2000’s master output is usually recorded on two Nuendo tracks through ADAT outs. In addition, the facility also boasts a UAD2 Quad accelerator card plus a fully loaded Waves plug-in bundle in each studio.

Meanwhile, eight of the desk’s omni-outs are routed to the upper floor to allow monitor mixes for recording live into the ground floor control room. Four outs are wired to the patch bay next to the O2R in studio B on the upper floor. Adding further innovation, Studio B’s 24 line/mic outs are directly routed to a patch bay located in Studio A. The digital outs from the MY 16- AT ADAT cards of the O2R in studio B are routed to the one single prism interface, while microphone inputs can be routed via an Avalon Vacuum Tube 737sp.

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Kailasa’s complement of microphones is substantial and wide-ranging, including a Neumann M149 and KM184, AKG D112s, 414s, and C451s, a Sennheiser MD421, an Electro voice RE-20, and a complement of Shure SM87s, SM57s, and SM58s. An Earthworks DK 50 is also included alongside a Brauner Phantom V. Headphones are all Sennheiser and Sony, with a mixture of HD280 and HD 600 models plus Sony MDR 7509s.

Finally, the facility is equally well set-up for film and television audio applications with the entire facility, house synchronised via Rosendahl Nanosyncs audio clock reference. Video cards from Black magic and Canopus multiple video monitoring options for a smooth work flow environment.

But regardless of the technology that has gone into the design of Kailasa Studios and the high profile it now enjoys as Kailash Kher himself continues to rise to ever greater fame, perhaps the best example of how personal the facility has become to the band who created it is the story of how they experimented within it during the recording of ‘Chaandan Mein’.

Having created the perfect space for their own workflow, indeed a temple of recording for Mr Kher himself, the band soon discovered that the best part of the building in which to achieve the perfect drum or percussion sound was in fact the ground floor corridor. For a man whose humble roots so inform his music and career, Kailash Kher must have appreciated the irony.