Studios 301 New Facility Grand Opening

The relaunch of Australia’s oldest and largest commercial recording studios, Studios 301 took place on Thursday 22^nd February. Industry guests were welcomed by 301 owner and CEO Dr. Tom Misner and special guest, six-time Grammy award winning UK producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, The Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel). Whilst being served a deluxe array of canapés and beverages from the team at Icebergs and sponsor Young Henry’s brewery, guests enjoyed the cocktail function before the official unveiling of the new 301 complex.

Designed by Dr Tom Misner, and master acoustician, Jochen Veith, the studio is the only tier one recording studio in Australia and un-arguably one of the world’s finest acoustically designed facilities. Recognising the ongoing need for a facility of this calibre in Australia – and the value of its legacy – Dr. Tom Misner committed to a multi-million dollar ground-up reconstruction and relocation project that took 16 months and an incredible 134,000 hours of labour to complete. The result is a no-compromise studio that now ranks as one of the top five studios in the world.

Dr. Misner had the following to say:

“In a time where large format studios are closing their doors around the world, the rebuild of the new Studios 301 complex reestablishes us as not just a leader in the Australian music industry, but one of the few top tier facilities of its kind in the world. Essentially philanthropic in nature, my aim with 301 is to create a platform for future engineers, producers and artists to be nurtured and flourish in world class facilities.”

The event brought together members from all walks of the industry. Performances in studio one featured classical crossover artist Van-Anh Nguyen and the Steve Barry Trio (with a guest appearance by Emma Pask). Attendees included members from The Preatures, DMA’S, The Jezabels, Coda Conduct, Rai Thistlethwayte (Thirsty Merc), Manu Crooks, BLESSED aka Miracle, Industry executives including Peter Karpin, MGM founder Sebastian Chase, Universal Music Australia Managing Director Michael Taylor, Sony Music’s Head of A&R, Paul Harris, APRA AMCOS’ Milly Petriella, plus an array of record producers, engineers and Studios 301 alumni.