‘It’s a foolproof plan until the studio burns down’: how a community rallied round for aspiring musicians

‘They 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. “Foolproof plan until you store it in a studio that burns down,” he says, now sounding wounded.

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 while Chubby and the Gang vocalist 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.

Ben Spence in Fuzzbrain. Photograph: Cole Flynn Quirke

Today, Spence, 27, is leaning back on an office chair in the handbuilt live room of Fuzzbrain’s new unit at Pulse Studios, tucked away amid various workshops, catering businesses and mechanics’ garages on a mews close to where he grew up in Walthamstow, east London. He describes the fire as “ground zero in the world’s best accidental PR campaign” while bass notes reverberate through the floor. The GoFundMe grew to more than £17,000 and Spence was able to replace most of his gear and reopen. “I never asked anyone for money,” he says. “But I was given a second chance, which doesn’t happen to anyone from around here.”

Sitting opposite Spence is the garage rock band Island of Love – guitarist-vocalists Karim Newble and Linus Munch, and bassist Daniel Giraldo. They formed in 2019 through Fuzzbrain and recorded some of their first demos with Spence at his parents’ house while the studio was out of commission. “My mum was on benefits, she got into trouble with loan sharks to get me a guitar,” Newble 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. “School was just trying to get people to stay long enough to pass their exams and, frankly, on knife watch so we didn’t fucking stab each other. You’re a promising artist? That world is for them lot over there. But what’s stopping us from doing it ourselves? This is east London, man, grime is from here.”

In August 2021, Spence and Deijuvhs, a rapper who promotes shows under the Lamesfest banner, put on a free festival in Walthamstow. Hoodstock was intended as a thank you for the support they had received, but it also spawned a ticketed successor that would eventually sustain a fund of the same name, one that allowed Spence to provide free access to Fuzzbrain. Each month, Spence parcels out slots for people aged 15 to 25, providing everything from guitars to leads and allowing free-rein for experimentation. “It might be the first time they’ve been treated as artists,” he says.

“Ben’s recorded some terrible bands I’ve been in,” says Island of Love’s Newble. “When I came to Fuzzbrain I was 16 and clueless, but he never made me feel as if I had stupid ideas.” Spence’s faith paid off: off the back off the band’s early demos and one gig at Third Man’s Blue Basement venue in Soho, the band signed to Jack White’s label, which will release their self-titled debut album in May. They made it with Spence at Fuzzbrain, while it was mixed by punk doyen Jack Shirley in California. It sounds like a million bucks, smashing together J Mascis-style fuzz and hooks straight out of Robert Pollard’s dog-eared playbook.

Those Blue Basement shows are now a monthly fixture – Spence’s “chance to get people in front of actual music industry shit”. Meanwhile, the third edition of Hoodstock is in the works, he is eyeing up a larger rehearsal space and has his heart set on opening a rural residential studio. “I didn’t have many opportunities,” he says, “so now it’s about how many I can physically do.”