Leah Kardos
Director
Leah has directed the studio since 2022 and teaches at Kingston School of Art, where she leads the MA Music Composition and Production courses.
She is a composer and producer; her albums Rococochet (2017) and Bird Rib (2020) were created in the studio.
She writes about records too, including books on David Bowie and Kate Bush as well as music criticism for The Wire magazine. She researches the women who worked in studios as engineers, tape operators and fixers and were left out of the historical record. Inbetween studio bookings, Leah can be found hanging out in the live room with her favourite studio instrument, the mellotron.
Ebby Acquah
Studio Technician
Ebby keeps everything in the room working. He came up on Motown, early rap and eighties jazz funk, and got his start in the industry through a dance music record shop, buying and selling records and DJing at parties.
He moved into engineering in the early nineties and spent seven years in-house at Mute, working alongside Gareth Jones, Flood and Ben Hillier, and with artists including Richie Hawtin, Barry Adamson and Erasure.
At Kingston, Ebby keeps tabs on logistics, keeps the equipment running, and over many years has passed on what he learned to the engineers who have come through this studio.
Rob Plummer
Senior Engineer
Rob engineers most sessions here and runs the tape machines. He has worked closely alongside Tony Visconti, Chris Kimsey and Chris Porter, and has engineers records for Ralph McTell, BISHI, Romances, The SOL Collective, The 1971 Project, the Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra, and many more.
He also manages the internship scheme, so most of the assistants you meet on a session will probably have been trained by him.
Rob is unusually serious about room mics: he might put up more than you asked for, and you will be glad of them at the mix.