POST-APOCALYPTIC PROG POP
SOMETIME NEAR THE END OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM, on a sprawling ranch high atop a Southern California mountain ridge overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a man finished construction of a small, mysterious building near the edge of his land. Walk up to the structure and you might have heard the hum of large motors whirring within.
“He used the building to house two generators,” says producer/composer Alan Parsons, the property’s new owner. “He thought, The apocalypse is going to happen at the end of 1999; there will be no more electricity, so I’ll produce my own. He was probably generating enough to power the entire city of Santa Barbara.”
Today, nearly two decades have passed since that time, when the Y2K “Millennium bug” threatened to disrupt computers everywhere and the services that rely on them. The world didn’t end, and the man and his generators are gone, but that doesn’t mean there’s not still an impressive machine between those walls.
“This is a Neve 5088,” Parsons says of the shiny new recording console that sits before him and Jeff Kollman, his lead guitarist, in his studio control room, the former Y2K-proof power bunker. “If you’re going to build a brand-new studio, you’ve got to start with a console. The 5088 is the culmination of Rupert Neve’s entire career designing consoles. It’s got all the sonic features he’s become famous for.”
Surrounding the console are five towering Bowers & Wilkins studio monitors. “I’ve had
