The Garage Recording Studio was founded in 1986 by Richard Salt & Peter Smith … two South London based tech-head music geeks influenced by an eclectic mix of genres including electronic bands of the time like Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, King Crimson, Japan & Human League; but also dance & soul producers like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Quincy Jones, Nile Rogers & also reggae artists such as UB40, Grace Jones & Bob Marley.

Prior to creating The Garage, Peter & Richard ran a production company called “Clearcut Productions” and whilst working with singer songwriters like Helen Rogers, Marie Pierre & Caroldene Black, it became apparent that renting studio time was a poor use of their limited resources so they decided to invest in & build a studio of their own, so  … The Garage Recording Studio was born.

In contrast to traditional analogue multi-track recording studios of the time, the mission of The Garage was to put emerging digital technology, such as MIDI, computer sequencing (such as the Atari ST running Steinberg Cubase) & sampling technology (such Emu E-max & Akai’s S1000) at the heart of the music creation process.

The Garage was based in Richard’s Mum’s garage (hence the name!) in a South London suburb (Mitcham, Surrey) in the UK & ran for 11 years from 1986 to 1996. In the latter years after Peter moved on, it was run by Richard & Joe Chibley.

From artists like Marvin Springer to Baby Ford & songwriters like Roy Hamilton to Graham Layden, this blog is dedicated to the many musicians, singers, songwriters & other talented people that worked with us at the Garage back in the day.

The mission of this blog is to create an archive that includes information about the artists & songwriters, the tracks & tech gear we used to produce it, photos, articles, some of the tunes, radio plays, videos & other memorabilia that paint a picture of the era.

Trying to remember all those involved & people’s names is a challenge! I hope we have credited everyone correctly. If you find an error please let us know.

This site was built using WordPress & SoundCloud. Any Garage recordings uploaded soundcloud.com to have been given the default license of “All Rights Reserved”. For details about licensing on SoundCloud see http://soundcloud.com/help/legal

If you have any photos, tunes, stories or comments, your contributions are most welcome.

Enjoy!