ALL
UNDER
ONE ROOF
A NEW LOCATION & NEW
OUTLOOK FOR
MONTREAL’S STUDIO BASE BIN
34 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
fans in the Montreal area have a
lot to be excited about come the city’s bustling summer festival
season. From the French-language fun of Les FrancoFolies to the
stylistic mosaic of the Montreal International Jazz Festival to the
hipster magnet that is the Osheaga Music and Arts festival, to
name only a few, there’s plenty on offer for festivalgoers as the city
transforms into a music Mecca in the sunnier months.
Albert Chambers is, first and foremost, a music fan, though
he’s got some extra reasons to be excited for this year’s festival
season in particular.
A longtime fixture of the Montreal music scene, Chambers has
been serving the city’s creative community since 1995 with Studio
Base Bin, a multi-purpose music facility that offers fully outfitted
rehearsal studios as well as recording and production services
under the same roof. As such, his business got a significant boost
each year as local and international touring artists converged on
the city with many seeking a pro-level rehearsal space.
However, after nearly two decades of operation in the arts
district of the Plateau-Mont-Royal area, Chambers was growing
disconcerted. Everything within Studio Base Bin was fine as far as
he was concerned; the area surrounding it, though, was not.
Rent and parking rates in the neighbourhood were rising fast
while buildings were being renovated and condos developed. As
Chambers puts it, “Everything was kind of going against the grain
of what had attracted us to the space years earlier.” On the back of
those changes, he made a deal and moved out.
At that point, his next step wasn’t totally clear. There was talk
of selling the business, though that never materialized. Instead,
he got a call about a new space – a large, open 10,000-sq. ft. ware-
house with 20-ft. ceilings that once housed a vertical blind manu-
facturing facility, of all things – and decided to investigate.
“It was nothing to write home to mom about, to say the least,”
Chambers says with a chuckle, “but I saw the potential, and kept
visualizing in my mind what it could become. It was beyond any-
thing I could have dreamed of.”
Music
BACK TO BASE-ICS
To understand the history of
Studio Base Bin is to under-
stand Chambers’ career trajec-
tory to date, as music has been
central to everything.
A native of Montreal and
longtime guitarist, Chambers
went straight into music retail
after high school, selling re-
cords or musical instruments or
a combination of the two with
various shops. He studied mu-
sic at the city’s Vanier College
and, following his stint there,
set off for Long Island where
he continued his playing career
while also working retail once
again. Eventually, he ended up
back in Montreal and took a
job at the city’s iconic Steve’s
Music store on Saint Antoine
Street.
Chambers spent years at
Steve’s, working his way up to
management for his final two
years there. “It’s a great place
to work and they treated me
great, but I started feeling like
I just had to do something on
my own,” Chambers recalls.
During his time in New
York, he had the opportuni-
ty to rehearse in some fully
outfitted, acoustically treated
rehearsal rooms and the ex-
perience stayed firmly affixed
in the back of his mind. “I just
loved walking into a space that
was totally equipped, where I
could just bring my guitar and
have everything we’d need to
make music. And I couldn’t be-
lieve how cheap it was for such
a cool space. I’d never experi-
enced anything like that.”
That’s the experience he
wanted to bring to his peers in
the Montreal music communi-
ty, and that’s what he set out to
do. Chambers built a business
plan and sought a startup loan
from the government, which
he did receive – largely, he
believes, because of some of
the name-dropping in his ap-
plication. “I think a lot of it was
based on the service I used to
give A-list bands, who would
often give me credits on their
records, so everyone from Ce-
line Dion to Beau Dommage,”
he recalls. “I think when I went
to the bank with photocopies
of my name on all of these
big records, it gave me a lot of
credibility from the beginning,
and led to that first loan.”
He found a suitable space
in the artistic district of the
Plateau that could host three
rehearsal rooms and signed his
lease. At the outset, he bene-
fitted from the support of his