'I've been looking for underground culture and been excited by it since.' 'It was very crowded, lots of freaky people, very positive feeling,' he says. His father was a doctor who worked in a hospital in the East Village and would sometimes walk around with his son after lunch, and that made a big impression on Bisi. Bisi was born in 1961 on the Upper East Side. This story began not far away from Gowanus geographically, but socially it was about as removed as you can get in New York. 'We met him randomly through a friend, and as soon as we talked to him and saw the studio, we thought there was a fascinating story to tell.' So many bands that he had a hand in influenced the sound, and yet he has very little recognition to his own name,' says Ryan Douglass, who co-directed Sound and Chaos with Sara Leavitt. 'I would absolutely call Martin an unsung hero of the New York music scene. Sound and Chaos, a comprehensive documentary about Bisi and his BC Studio, hit iTunes, Google Play and other digital platforms on August 18, and in it, the self-proclaimed cultural antagonist finally gets credit for all his small-print credits over the years. However, the man who contributed to the sound of early hip-hop (see his work with Afrika Bambaataa), avant-garde (Naked City, Fred Frith, Foetus) and indie rock (seminal albums by Sonic Youth, Swans and The Dresden Dolls) might soon finally get recognition. Maybe even more importantly, he became a household name in music production, working with a vast diversity of artists ranging from Laurie Anderson to Iggy Pop, from Mick Jagger to Stina Nordenstam.īisi, who has been the principal engineer, producer and caretaker of the Gowanus studio since parting ways with Laswell in mid-'80s, hasn't established quite as much of a name for himself. Over the years, Laswell became one of the most prominent and innovative bassists in the city, playing with jazz and avant-garde legends such as John Zorn, Fred Frith and Buckethead and releasing dozens of albums.

It was a bargain, though-at least from a creative standpoint. You would come out of the subway station, and there are 20 kids with baseball bats, and you have to give them your money, and there's no way around it,' Laswell tells Newsweek. Broken thermometers left behind when a company exited a neighboring factory were scattered all around the courtyard of the building that housed the studio, on the corner of 3 rd Avenue and 3 rd Street, and another neighboring building housed a coffee roasting factory that two or three times a day emitted a huge black cloud that descended onto the courtyard and came in through the windows. At the time, drugs were sold openly on Union Street and street fights were common among The Crazy Homicides and The Sunset Skins and other gangs.

After all, it was just another day in Gowanus. (Even back in the day, that wasn't a place one would want to end up.)īisi and Laswell obliged. They drew out knives and told Bisi and Laswell that if they didn't give them money, they would be thrown into the Gowanus canal. They tried to keep walking, but the members of a gang that called itself The Crazy Homicides had other plans. 'Yeah, OK,' Bisi replied, figuring the best strategy would be to act normal. After overhearing what Laswell and Bisi were discussing, one of them said loudly: 'Oh! Artists!'Īnother said: 'Hi! We're Brooklyn muggers.' They wore forage caps and leather jackets and looked menacing. Suddenly, a group of men came up behind them.

One day in the early 1980s, Martin Bisi and Bill Laswell, both musicians and producers, were walking in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood and talking about music they had been recording at the studio they'd established in a half-vacant, mid-19th-century building a few blocks away.

Bc studio brooklyn gowanus