The duo behind this £200,000 venture is Duncan Davis and Adam Twine who have been immersed in the club scene since their teens. Duncan broke into it at 16 when armed with a couple of cases of albums, he bluffed his way into a DJ residency in Ibiza for the summer with no experience apart from in front of his bedroom mirror, while Adam ran a club on the Isle of Wight.
Though Cut & Groove only opened its doors seven months ago, it is already pretty busy. The facility's offer of a competitively priced service, handling all aspects of dubplating, mastering, pressing and print has been well received. Among the regulars is Eddy Craig of the Wideboys, who has remixed tracks from many top artists including Artful Dodger, Geri Halliwell, and the All Saints (Black Coffee) and Pat Ward of KRD who has brought in work from artists like Bush, Boo, Joey Beltram and Ocean Colour Scene.
Behind the desk is chief engineer George 'Murder,' who has 16 years mastering experience in the West End under his belt. George has worked for companies like EMI, Universal, Mushroom, Polydor, Jive, Telstar, Perfecto, BMG and King-size and artists like Garbage, Ash, P Diddy, Will Smith, TLC, Alicia Keys, Whitney Houston, Dido, Wild Harts and many more. Along with trainee engineer Andy Gould, all four live above the 'shop'.
The foursome did most of the construction work themselves to cut costs, and they have used HHB to supply most of the gear, which was installed by Sean Davies. Duncan said: 'HHB were fantastic because they let us try everything out first." They managed to buy a revered Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe, and upgraded this to pitch 98. Despite Duncan's initial prejudice, Cut & Groove has opted for Genelec monitoring. "We compared Genelec to leading brands" says Duncan "I had never heard or used them before but for some odd reason I'd decided I didn't like them. Of course, when I did listen to them they sounded so amazing and precise, we ordered a pair of 1038 and a 7071 sub."
Other gear in their £200,000 spend includes a Pro Tools with Pro-Control, Tascam DA 45 DAT player/recorder, Chiswick Reach Compressor, GML Parametric equalizer, SPL De-Esser, an Apogee CD Mastering Track 22 Unit with unique UV 20 bit encoding process and AD converter.
Cut & Groove are running an introductory offer: Send your master in and get the first track free, 12" cost £45 for two sides and albums are a flat rate of £200, however many titles.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
