I had heard talk of a new project from the Unapologetic collective, so I called IMAKEMADBEATS out of the blue. No texting. We’re both aware that this is a dying art. “I’m actually pro-‘just calling,’” he says. “I want to take it back to years ago, when you just called people.” Still, it’s not every day you can ask someone you phone where they are and hear them say, “I’m in outer space right now.”
Of course, by “outer space,” MAD (as he’s called) really meant Outerspace, the new recording studio recently opened by Unapologetic. If that alone doesn’t sound too noteworthy, just take a look inside, as a few of us were able to back in August. The first public event at the facility on Central Avenue was a listening event for the new album by Aaron James, Nobody Really Makes Love Anymore. Back then, many rooms were still under construction, but the main control room and live tracking room were finished. To all of us gathered there, MAD said, “I wanted a space that, when I walked into it, could remove all the stresses I had to go through to get here. Just kind of wipe them off my shoulder as I enter the space. That’s why when you walk in here, you’re immediately slapped in the face with a vibe. Because that’s what I need, is to get slapped in the face with a vibe. It’s perfect for me and for us.”
That vibe is in a colorful, electric, semi-science-fiction vein, practically daring you to innovate. And such an environment was of the upmost importance as the collective created their first standalone facility. MAD recalls its genesis in the pandemic. “I look back and think, ‘Wow, we did all of this [recorded work before Outerspace] from spare bedrooms in my house. That’s kinda crazy.’ But when 2020 hit us, my son was almost 3. He was growing up and needed more space. The pandemic sent us all into our own caves, in isolation. I began to consider, ‘How do I interact with so many people, yet keep my family safe and separated?’ The obvious answer was to find a new space.”
But why call it Outerspace? As MAD explains, “I’m a big comic book guy, and I love Watchmen. There’s a classic image from that graphic novel, of Doctor Manhattan on Mars. When he needed to silence his mind and get some peace, he would just go and sit on Mars by himself. So when I thought about putting a place together, I wanted it to be for me what Mars was for Doctor Manhattan.”
As the Unapologetic team progressed, the logic of their chosen motif unfolded. “So if you go to Outerspace, you fly into Andromeda, the main control room,” explains MAD. “And then maybe you end up on another planet. So we call our live room Another Planet. And if there’s life there, you expect to see water and vegetation. So our two isolation booths in the live room are called The River, for the water, and The Garden, for the vegetation.” True to its name, The Garden is festooned with roses.
But there’s more, all designed with considerable care by the group’s various members. As MAD noted on his Facebook page, “I felt like most studios were designed by engineers, for engineers. I just wanted mine to be overwhelmingly for artists.” And that’s what the various rooms convey. Butterfly, the smaller studio, is named after the colliding Butterfly Galaxies. Then there are the hallways, the dressing room, the bathroom, and The Shuttle. “The Shuttle is the room I’m most excited about,” says MAD. “Our room dedicated to visual media and visual arts. It’s stocked with high-end computer equipment, microphones, cameras, Go-Pros. It’s acoustically treated, but you can take off the treatment if you want bare, white walls.” At last, Unapologetic can integrate all their output under one roof.
“One day, just for fun, we tried to exercise this new assembly line,” says MAD. “You can record here, mix here, and shoot the video here. So PreauXX cut a song in Butterfly, then I began mixing it in Andromeda, and we bounced out a rough mix so they could shoot a music video for it in The Shuttle. Three or four hours later, PreauXX had a new song mixed, mastered, and filmed.”