2020 Recordings is an audio production house, working in all aspects of voice production, music and sound design across many types of projects.
We caught up with the Director of 2020 Recordings and one of Tileyard’s first community members, Adam Helal, to take a deeper look into the fantastic things they are up to.
- What are some of 2020 Recordings’ biggest highlights of last year?
One of the games we worked on, Last Stop, received a TIGA award for best RPG. We are particularly proud of it as it is a voice-led supernatural video game, featuring hours of dialogue and a voice cast of over 25 actors, and we covered all the voice casting, recording and production on this project.
We usually work on projects that are a couple of years away from release, so some of the best highlights from last year we can’t talk about yet!
- What are some of your favourite projects 2020 Recordings has worked on?
This might sound weird but the most fun projects we work on are children’s and education audio! Our team works on many short, creative projects that need fun music composition and sound design. We have been fortunate to bring Mr Men, Bob the Builder, Peppa Pig and many more series to the Tonies audio platform.
With Audible last year, we developed a new workflow to mix in Dolby Atmos with our creative sound design and music composition, to push long-form narrative-led audio as far as it could go, in the very well-received The Ice Children.
On the more adult side of this, is a similar project we also made with Audible – Isaac Steele and the Forever Man – if you have a subscription to Audible I would definitely suggest anyone who’s into Sci-Fi Comedy should give it a listen.
- Tell us about 2020 Recordings’ studios here at Tileyard
Having been here since 2013, we’re lucky that Tileyard has been able to accommodate us as we have grown and taken on more and more spaces. We now have studios that cover every different type of project we work on, whether it’s a big group of actors performing in one space for a radio drama, recording synced to picture for animation and advertising, or having the right atmosphere, space and tools to collaborate on creative sound design and music.
My favourite (Studio T) is filled with analogue outboard gear and synthesisers and is setup so you can walk in, hit play on a sequencer, and instantly start performing with everything recorded to a hard disk recorder, no need for a computer, and the ability to instantly tweak sounds at your fingertips. The Memorymoog we’ve got is amazing for those deep fat sounds, and it’s such a vibey place to create and get ideas down.
- What kind of music have you been working on?
I personally love being in Studio T creating House and Techno, but our team works on many briefs, writing everything from full orchestral scores to kids education songs! We cover pretty much all genres and styles of music across our team, which makes collaborating really quite exciting.
Most of our team have music projects outside of 2020 too; their own bands, producing artists and DJing, and we love everyone using the studios in downtime to work on their own projects. We even wrote a company Christmas EP last year – HR Nightmare Before Christmas.
- What are your goals for this year?
Obviously, we hope to continue working with the amazing people and companies we do, as well as expanding more into other areas. But we’ve just launched the Creative Initiative, which is the kickstart programme for us to start developing and releasing our own content, so watch this space!
- What do you enjoy about being at Tileyard?
We love the community here and all the individuals and companies we get to become good friends with and work together on projects – Design Lab did our rebrand 1.5 years ago and we now see each other nearly every day and regularly work together!
If you’re at Tileyard at 8 am, I’m sure you’ll have heard me being shouted at in the on-site gym – Stan is an amazing trainer!
The Vinyl Café has got a great vibe and helps us accommodate our team and visitors with coffee, catering and anything we need. Thanks Cédric, Pippa and the team! They really look out for us.
