Boy from Ohio goes to Guinea to study djembe drumming, boy meets girl in Chicago who studied in Mali, couple moves to New York for boy to follow Sxip Shirey in the Bindlestiff Family Circus, and couple builds a beautiful, world-class studio in a Hasidic neighborhood next door to a shul. We’ve all been there, right? Regardless of the path that got them here, Amon Drum and Mona Kayhan have created a stunning space for recording in Brooklyn in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, and stacked up an impressive pile of credits, including The Lumineers, Cory Henry, Trippie Redd, Jason Moran, and Lake Street Dive. Amon and Mona were nice enough to let me come through on a Friday to hear their story and see the incredible spot that is The Bridge Studio.
Back in the early 2000’s, Amon was playing three to four nights a week as a gigging percussionist and linked up with The Hook Studio in Red Hook to have a place to “make noise.” After suffering a back injury in a car accident, he found himself mixing The Analog Players Society at The Hook on an angled massage table, and the studio soon closed. The silver lining: he was able to buy out his former partners and acquire The Hook’s Hammond organ and esteemed Harrison 4032C console. After an 18-month search, he and Mona found this “piece of shit” abandoned building and knew that if they did the work themselves it could be a suitable location. As Amon puts it, “We didn’t have a lot of capital, but we had ambition!”
The Bridge took two and a half years to build and had a soft launch in 2018. Coming from a family of woodworkers, Amon and master carpenter Clifton Cunningham made the studio a building within their space, using 6-inch concrete blocks full of sand. As the location was a former bean sprout factory, there was the challenge of removing a loft that contained a steel water tank that needed jackhammers and blowtorches to deconstruct. Having previously set up The Hook and Manhattan audio school Dubspot, Amon had taught himself to construct acoustic panels and put his expertise to use at The Bridge. “Acoustics is doing your best guess and hoping it works.” Further inspired by herringbone wood art, Amon drew the design of the back wall to Mona’s approval and got to work.
Once the space was complete, the vision was to get people in the door by virtue of the beautiful live room and slowly build up gear over time. Mona’s job would be to “hunt down potential clients, and bring home ‘meat’ for the family,” Amon says half-jokingly. After securing a few small loans and a third investor, Amon and Mona were able to buy him out and take full ownership, becoming an actual mom-and-pop shop. Much of the gear on display was donated by friends in the spirit of Stone Soup: An Old Tale (Marcia Brown), where The Bridge’s massive concrete floor invited the community to create a veritable "stew" of musical gifts. When it came time to pull the massive Harrison console out of storage, fellow Brooklyn studio cat Joel Hamilton [Tape Op #85] replied to Amon’s Facebook post and showed up with his crew to lend a hand. Shahzad Ismaily [#151] was so impressed with the room that he began sending overflow clients from his Figure 8 studio, even booking his own sessions at The Bridge. “There’s this community that’s been built, and Mona is the bridge between the music and the masses.”
While the live room "worked," extra time was spent in the control room to dial in the sound, including installing Amon’s custom-built (and super cool-looking) panel of 2000 wooden diffuser rods. The reflections coming off the angle of the console were also a challenge, although everything came together with the arrival of the tallest speaker tower I’ve ever witnessed: The HEDD Extended Tower Mains. Having met HEDD's Freddy Knop at one of The Bridge’s industry parties, Amon explained the vision of the studio and Freddy was so knocked out by the place that he brought over a set of the Tower Mains. Consisting of two subwoofers, two midrange sections, and the “air motion ribbon tweeter” it was Amon’s dream come true: Less ear fatigue at high volumes, headroom for days, and the wow factor for clients. And with that, he proceeded to wow me with some music played through the HEDDs. After warming them up with some bone-shaking tracks from Run the Jewels and Lil Yachty, he pulled up the recent Jason Moran plays Duke Ellington recordings, tracked at The Bridge in December. What I heard was absolutely stunning, putting me inside the piano with incredible dynamic range. Next up was M’Bemba Bangoura’s Boreya, recorded live without headphones. Hearing the seven musicians deftly glide through complex polyrhythms as M’Bemba unleashed a flurry of djembe rolls sounded massive yet intimate through the HEDD speakers. The Bridge is also an official demo space for potential HEDD buyers, so let them know if you’d like to check them out for yourself. Personally, I’m sold… now if I could only fit them in my bedroom.
