Twenty-One Pilots has been on the road since last fall with its worldwide Bandito Tour, supporting the band’s Trench album, released in October, 2018. Like many acts, the duo writes while on the road, but for creating the record, lead vocalist Tyler Joseph built a sizable, serious home studio in his Columbus, OH basement. Thanks to photos that Joseph has posted to Instagram, fans and gear-spotters have had multiple opportunities to gawk at the facility and see where much of the new album was recorded.
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In a post that documented the build-out of the basement facility itself, Joseph noted [edited for clarity], “For the writing and recording of Trench, I knew I needed to be home. In order to do that, I needed a studio built in my basement. Watching the space come to life alongside of the record itself was something I wanted to share. The excuses that came with writing and recording in hotels, buses, and green rooms were nowhere to be found. And that pressure created a group of songs that I have become very proud of.”
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Earlier posts made in August and September, 2018 reveal some of the facility’s gear, including the variety of studio monitors on hand. For instance, there’s a pair of Focal SM9 studio monitors atop Zaor Isostand MK2 height-adjustable speaker stands, with Zaor iSOPLANE speaker isolation pads crammed in between the stands and Focals for decoupling.
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Taking pride of place behind the console are a pair of Roland’s discontinued RSM-90 studio monitors, and behind them, soffitted into the walls, are ATC’s sizable SCM110ASL monitors. With all that to choose from, it’s no surprise that there’s a monitor controller in view—in this case, a JBL Intonato desktop controller.
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Ironically, while the studio was built in part to make writing on the road unnecessary, music is getting recorded while on the move anyway, as evidenced from an Instagram post Joseph put up in December, 2018 from Adelaide, Australia.
