One morning in December 2022, rue Boyer, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. In this street which hosts the concert halls La Bellevilloise and La Maroquinerie, Rosalía waits in front of a white door. A few days before a concert at the Accor Arena in Bercy, the Spanish singer is busy in this building, a music studio, whose decoration oscillates between a luxury hotel and an apartment decorated with antique pieces. She stayed there two days in a row, notably to record the hit Beso.
A month later, the Rue Boyer studios officially opened. This 500 square meter building, invisible from the street, has since hosted American artists Kid Cudi, Pusha T and Pharrell Williams. And even, in a sense, Beyoncé, since Stuart White, her sound arranger, did the mixing there for her last world tour, the Renaissance World Tour. This in less than a year and a half: “We didn’t expect such excitement, especially since the decoration of the studio wasn’t even finished,” wonders Victor Lévy-Lasne, one of the two creators.
The inspiration is that of the emblematic studios, like Miraval, in the Var. The atmosphere is woody. The colors are warm. As for the furniture, we believe we find influences from the 1970s. A warm place which has become a must for musicians stopping over in the capital. And this, in a context where music studios are closing in turn in Paris.
Nothing goes as planned
Engineers by training, Victor Lévy-Lasne and Maxime Le Guil, both aged 35, met in 2006, during their higher studies at the Ecole centrale de Lyon. They formed Mix with the Masters four years later, a program of master classes and musical seminars that brings together the largest number of professionals in the sector, ranging from engineers to producers.
They thus formed a network beyond borders and developed their passion for sound, the energetic Maxime Le Guil already being a mixer and producer of albums. “We have always been passionate about working with sound. Good equipment, even the smallest cable, is important today: it allows you to control the details of a production. We therefore wanted to create a place in Paris, based on everything we have learned, at the cutting edge of sound recording technology. remembers the latter.
In 2016, they came up with the idea of centralizing their activities around a studio. They start looking for a business, with several characteristics: intra muros, poorly insulated, in poor condition. “We also have skills in building engineering that we wanted to implement. We were looking for a place where everything had to be redone,” says Victor Lévy-Lasne. They find this old abandoned workshop, but nothing goes as planned. Between unscrupulous contractors and work taking longer than expected, four years pass.
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