Martin Bisi and Director Ryan Douglas in attendance!
For over 30 years, Martin
Bisi has recorded music from his studio in Brooklyn’s Gowanus
neighborhood. After a chance New York encounter, the studio was founded
with money from Brian Eno, who subsequently worked on the album On Land
there.
Working with Bill Laswell and the band Material, Bisi
recorded Herbie Hancock’s hit Rockit in this underground space. This was
the first mainstream, popular song to feature a DJ and a turntable,
utilizing ‘scratching’. Following that success, Bisi worked with many
other influential musicians there, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Angels
of Light, John Zorn, Foetus and the Dresden Dolls. He has recorded
across many genres, from experimental music, to hip hop and indie rock
in the old factory building by the contaminated Gowanus Canal.
However,
the future of the recording studio is in question as it is squeezed in
by the encroaching gentrification of the neighborhood. A new, massive
Whole Foods supermarket across the street is the latest addition to this
once out-of-the-way area, that Bisi fears will increase property values
to the point of pushing out long-time renters and artists like himself.
SOUND
AND CHAOS: THE STORY OF BC STUDIO includes interviews with musicians
such as Michael Gira of Swans, Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls, Bob
Bert, who played on Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising, Bill Laswell of
Material, JG Thirlwell aka Foetus, Michael Holman of Gray (with
Jean-Michel Basquiat) and creator of famed 1984 hip-hop TV pilot
Graffiti Rock.