the bald's cave - studio construction thread - France

[kranku68]

Hello everybody !!!
well after a very long period of very fine observation (i hope i can write that !) of this forum, of viewing all these threads 'bout all your fabulous recording studios, of dreaming, crying and lots of things we can't talk about here, i've decided to start my own thread !
yeah i did it !

so, few words 'bout my person perhaps.
well i'm gilles, lead singer and guitarist of "the genital genius" (absolutely ridiculous name), french rock band that's trying to play some music for 5 years now.
i live in south of france, in a place called "la provence verte", near a town called Brignoles...really quiet place, very nice to live there, but for the musician it's really a desert, a sort of little sahara...with trees and lots of vine yards
But no place to play, to record, to gig etc...the devil's pinky hole as we say here...

oh yeah i know what to say that will help to localise my plant ! my neighbours were angelina and Brad Pitt !
they were living in the only house with a ****ing good recording studio in it (Miraval...wow, what a great place my friends), the only one at 100 kms all around.
So, with such problems to play, and record i've decided to build my own little cave in my garden (i'v got a quite big garden in fact...too much grass to mow)...by myself.

no i'm not mad, i've already built my home, so something that will be 35 square meters, sound isolated won't be such an impossible thing !
So for the next two years i will try to share with you the progression of my building and will be glad to read all your comments and advices !

[Syncamorea]

Genital Genius? Did you guys reinvent crotch rock?

I look forward to seeing your studio. Will it have a long, narrow live room with two round control rooms at one end?

[kranku68]

wow never thought 'bout such shape...but there will be a lava lamp !...

[kranku68]

well, finally after nearly 15 days of rain we've had some days with a decent weather...
so i jumped on my water pump, get out 120 m3 of water from my working zone and made some concrete...
so the foundations are now made.
as you can see i've got a concrete inspector too...perhaps it's something necessary to build a studio...

[kranku68]

hi folks, some news from France...
well, after some weeks, i'm back with my some pictures...
as the natural floor 's not horizontal, i've had to deal with that...so i built a little wall to raise the level and fill the empty space to the correct level...
5 m3 after i'm at the correct altitude...
tomorrow i'll compact all this material and i'll prepare all the things (reinforcing steel) to receive the concrete (on sunday)...the only problem is that it's actually raining (130 mm in 24 hours...huge !)

[amishsixstringe]

Dude, I feel your rain issues. It rained the last 8 days in a row here. Hard to dig out retaining wall when it's raining the mud right back on you. It will drought eventually.

Looks good to me. Do you have a print of what you're building?


Neil

[kranku68]

for the moment i've got the print of the global structure for the "building permit" (how do you say that ?)...i will scan this to show the global look of the construction...
i'm working on the print of the inside waiting for the rain to stop (now 250 mm in 36 hours...i'm learning to swim in mud...)

[Guglielmino]

Genital genius?
The bald´s Cave?
You should spend a fortune in lightning, and HVAC....
Usually this type of caves are dark, wet and smelly.
With not much space to "a whole band", just soloists.



UPS!
I hope I won´t get banned.
Cheers

[kranku68]

guglielmino...

[Guglielmino]

Forgive me.
I´m so happy with 4-1 to South Korea.

[kranku68]

4-1...great score !
i don't think france will be able to reproduce something like that tonight

[kranku68]

Sunday...
on sunday you can:
stay at home
drink some cool beers
eat some BBcue
do nothing

or

make some concrete.
we did that yesterday.
it was a two run race. First two hours, great work and suddenly a big two hours thunderstorm...
then some sunshine, we get back to the concrete mixer and had to deal with sporadic rain to finish the work....5 pm everything was done

[Chris Lago]

Va parler a Angelina et Brad et enregistre dans leur maison non?

[kranku68]

bah vu les molosses qu'il y a au portail, je peux même plus aller acheter du pinard à la cave du domaine !!!
alors revoir les tranches de console du studio c'est pas demain la veille !...
remarque il parait qu'ils se séparent donc avec un peu de bol...

[Chris Lago]

Originally Posted by kranku68

bah vu les molosses qu'il y a au portail, je peux même plus aller acheter du pinard à la cave du domaine !!!
alors revoir les tranches de console du studio c'est pas demain la veille !...
remarque il parait qu'ils se séparent donc avec un peu de bol...

Wow alors ils ont des chiens qui gardent l'établissement? Est-ce que Brad va revenir avec Jennifer Aniston ou quoi? Je ne les ai jamais vu ici a Beverly Hills alors ils doivent rester en France pour la majorité du temps. Utilisent-ils le studio qu'ils ont? Je n'avais aucune idée qu'ils étaient artistes.

[kranku68]

Originally Posted by Chris Lago

Wow alors ils ont des chiens qui gardent l'établissement? Est-ce que Brad va revenir avec Jennifer Aniston ou quoi? Je ne les ai jamais vu ici a Beverly Hills alors ils doivent rester en France pour la majorité du temps. Utilisent-ils le studio qu'ils ont? Je n'avais aucune idée qu'ils étaient artistes.

non en fait dans la baraque qu'ils ont pris en LOA (le domaine plutôt), sur 5 ans, il y a un monstrueux studio d'enregistrement, les Floyd y ont enregistré une partie de The Wall, U2 y est passé,The Cure, j'en passe et des meilleurs, les derniers à avoir investi les lieux ce sont les MUSE pour l'avant dernier album (black holes)...c'est assez habité comme lieu au niveau de l'ambiance.
ce qui est quand même assez énorme c'est que quand tous ce gars sont venus il n' y a jamais eu de soucis particuliers, ils ont toujours été peinards, on leur a foutu la paix, on pouvait aller siroter un peu de la dernière cuvée du domaine, voir les ingé sons discuter matos...
depuis que les Brangelina sont là, portail clos, gardes du corps et interdiction de s'approcher à moins de 2 kms (c'est la distance du portail à a demeure désert d'oliviers, de vignes de chênes et de pins).

[grandjavel]

Comment vont les travaux ? Je reviens tout juste de Courthézon (près d'Avignon), le Bandol me manque (Y'en a pas ici...)

[kranku68]

ahhhhh courthézon !!! le soleil, le vent !...je connais pas mal le coin pour avoir écumé les routes vauclusienne à vélo il y a quelques années ( tous les dimanches de l'année, les courses cyclistes locales)...
les travaux reprennent dès la semaine prochaine, là j'étais en vadrouille (espagne, paris...)...donc normalement des nouvelles détaillées en milieu de semaine prochaine

[kranku68]

finally i'm back !
so the work's going on...first, i had to fight last week with the buiding materials supplier...pfffff, what a big headache to have some bricks delivered in my garden !
after an entire week, they 're here ! but not all the stuff i wanted tutt 50 of them are still on the way to my home...but where, nobody knows.

so first of all, i'm building with porotherm bricks...a particular technique that requires a first row totally horizontal (the top and bottom of the bricks are rectified with a diamond file to be strictly parallell)...
i began at the highest point of the concrete slab and then from this highest first block then I leveled all the other blocks, one after the other....long, long work for something really accurate (2 days).

[kranku68]

by the way...waiting for the cement to dry totally i'm waisting my time doing funny things...like these:

[kranku68]

one day work...

[kranku68]

some liters of sweat after:

[kranku68]

hey ho, let's go !
so after some weeks of total silence from France, here i am again...
i've made some progress in the construction process: walls are done ! all the walls...
that was not so easy, specially after the concrete has been pourred to made the belt over the doors and windows...these bricks are really hard to cut even with a diamond saw.
so some photos of the actual cave:

[kranku68]

the roof...alone, with only two hands...that was something quite difficult.
but it's done (with some pain on my back now).
the rain can fall, i can work inside !

[kranku68]

hu !
last thursday was a big day.I rent a moving truck, called some friends a reached the mediterranean coast to get some toys...
here they are:
360 square meters of plasterboard, the hardest version (called BA14...80 kg each panel !) and 350 square meters of iso glasswool.
we picked up all this stuff in the morning, put these 8500 kg in the truck, got back and stocked everything in the cave in the afternoon, with our hands...10 days to recover our muscles and backs !

i've also tried on a little portion of the east wall to raise the final aspect: a real stone wall in front of the prorotherm. So finally we've got an outside wall of 45 cm ! that will be a huge for mass !

[Syncamorea]

8500kg.... And you got to lift it into the truck, then out of the truck? You'll be so strong, you'll be able to snap the neck of a Strat like the dude on The Man from Utopia album cover.

[kranku68]

Originally Posted by Syncamorea

8500kg.... And you got to lift it into the truck, then out of the truck? You'll be so strong, you'll be able to snap the neck of a Strat like the dude on The Man from Utopia album cover.

fortunately two of my friends were helping...one one was sliding the sheets out of the truck while we were moving'em to the cave...at the end of the day we were totally destroyed...i discovered at this point some of my muscles i never knew 'bout being presents in my body !

the funniest thing i remember was the sticker on the truck : max load 1300 kg...oooopsss.

at the end i'm sure i'll be as strong as ranxerox ! (the original character used to do the picture on zappa's album )

[kranku68]

rain rain rain rain...water all around me...for too many times and the project had to stop...
it's still cold here but now we can walk all around without being in the mud, and so we've got some progress here

[duff_bdg]

Any updates pic ?

[Ed Zeppeli]

Cool thread, thanks for posting.

I'm interested in seeing more too.