The destruction of Fuzzbrain studios dispossessed the local bands who recorded there for free – until owner Ben Spence’s neighbourhood gave them a second chance
hey essentially blew a fucking hole in the ceiling,” Ben Spence says, with notes of anger and disbelief colouring the accompanying laugh. He is recounting the night in September 2020 when his studio, Fuzzbrain, was destroyed in a fire that spread from an adjoining industrial unit. “I don’t know what kind of business situation they had going on, but there were a lot of gas canisters in there.”
The blaze was a nasty blow. Igniting mid-pandemic, it imperilled Spence’s already precarious livelihood. But the loss of Fuzzbrain also threatened the scene that had sprung up around the studio thanks to its policy of offering cut-price, often free, recording sessions, rehearsal time and advice to young working-class musicians. A self-taught engineer from the area, with a similar background, Spence had been applying for grants while refurbishing and selling equipment to keep the lights on.
Real community, though, is a two-way street and Spence found that he had people on his side. Jonah Falco, drummer with hardcore greats Fucked Up, started a GoFundMe whilevocalist Charlie Manning-Walker began mentioning the fire in interviews surrounding the punks’ buzzy debut LP Speed Kills. “[Fuzzbrain] is something no amount of government funding or crowd-raising internet shit can build, [only] years of nurture and care for artists,” Manning-Walker says.
Part of Fuzzbrain’s mission is to provide that first step on the ladder that Spence struggled to find. As a teenager, he learned the ropes of DIY sustainability by watching documentaries on Jay Reatard and the Grateful Dead, along with classics such as Woodstock and Penelope Spheeris’s canonical history of LA punk The Decline of Western Civilisation. “There were no pathways,” he says.
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