With a roll call that includes Irvine Welsh, Simon Cowell, Tilda Swinton and Nicola Sturgeon Offbeat Studios, a tiny independent business on the Royal Mile is celebrating its thirty year anniversary.
Producer Iain McKinna and wife Kirsty have welcomed an amazing collection of guests at the studios since opening in 1994.
In the early days McKinna played session guitar with The Bay City Rollers as well as playing in a band published by Simon Cowell.
More recently Offbeat has become the go-to venue for film soundtracks, voiceovers and audio books, with guests including Hollywood royalty Tilda Swinton, broadcaster Nicky Campbell and political pundit Iain Dale.
In a blog written to mark the anniversary McKinna says: “Almost every year in the early period of the Offbeat studio business was tinged with uncertainty, and we never assumed we would still be operating the following year, never mind 30 years later, so we are allowing ourselves to feel quite satisfied having made it this far.
“The initial reasoning for starting every studio I’ve been involved in was to make my own music. I’d been a guitarist in local bands since the early 70’s. What I never seemed to factor in was, that to survive as a business I had to record just about everything else instead.”
Noted early visitors included punk band Scars, the reformed Bay City Rollers and Jimi The Piper, who Iain discovered playing on the Royal Mile and who went on to record three albums.
In his days as a musician Iain McKinna signed to the then unknown Simon Cowell in a band called Flying Colours. Later the success of the X factor and Britain’s Got Talent inspired a generation of DIY pop stars – and Offbeat invited scores of would be performers – including schoolchildren – to make their own demo tapes.
Film maker Mark Cousins suggested another kind of business when, after meeting Iain and Kirsty at a birthday party, he chose to record the soundtracks to his films Stockholm My Love, with Neneh Cherry, and The Eyes of Orson Welles, which was shortlisted for the Best Documentary Prize at Cannes.
After Offbeat started to specialise in audio books and soundtracks the little studio off the Royal Mile became a magnet for literary stars – including Irvine Welsh, Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Thanks to a collaboration with near neighbours Canongate Books the BBC-approved recording studio was particularly well known for recordings of the brand of murder mystery known as Tartan Noir.
Somehow Iain and Kirsty McKinna also found time for their own creative project Harmonic Overdrive, which got to number one in the iTunes New Age music chart.
“It’s been an exciting bare white knuckle ride,” said McKinna, “We’ve met some great people and we’re looking forward to the future. It might be time to slow down – but I doubt it.”
You can read Iain’s blog here:
You can listen to Crystal Colours, the latest release from Harmonic Overdrive and watch the video here:
