DETAILS
Contact, RATES, crew, history
IJland Studio
Rietlandpark 371
1019 EM Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31204186450
Email us
The ideal location for one of the last VINTAGE recording studios in the Amsterdam city centre
The recording studio is located at a unique spot in the city centre of Amsterdam, with the tranquility of the IJ-lake just around the corner. Within five minutes, tram 26 from Amsterdam Central Station takes you to Rietlandpark which is one minute walking distance of our front door. Cars and taxis can stop and (un)load right in front without any hassle. (Scroll down for detailed directions.)
There’s the shopping center Brazilië right across the street for all your needs. Food can be prepared and consumed in our kitchen and lounge area. Directly above the studio there’s the easy going bar / diner Fosco, where you can have great food and enjoy a drink at the terrace. For those who can afford, the iconic five-star Hoxton Lloyd Hotel is located in the neighbouring building.
All in all we’d like to think IJland Studio is the ideal location for a music studio in the heart of Amsterdam, where you can make music 24/7 without having to leave the compound, but with comfortable options if you want to.
Crew
Tim Visser
Recording & mixing engineer / producer / musician
Musician / songwriter who worked himself into a bachelor in Sound Design, but then the academy forgot to put him on the list so he started recording himself. Figured Sociology would help him ordering chaos, but ended up in a recording studio after all, managing social processes by not doing so much and letting things happen. Famous for his random quotes, the best possibly being ‘I might be sitting on this side of the window but in reality I’m there with you’ or: ‘I’d like to give chance a chance’.
Remko Schouten
Senior recording, mixing & mastering engineer, tutor, FOH
Travelled across the globe as Pavement’s FOH for almost 20 years. Building up an extensive network in the cultural epicentre of the 90’s, he lured many famous bands into IJland since settling in 2005. Expert in working with Pro Tools, highly skilled in enhancing recordings or restoring audio. A mix or (re-)master of your work by Remko is guaranteed to take it to another level. In 2024 he opened Studio Zarzalico in the south of Spain on 28 acres of sweet nothingness, where being remote is actually still possible, under the comfort of tapas, cheap beer and siestas.
Ahmad Mansour
Assistant recording & mixing engineer, musician, FOH
Whoever said Gen Z-ers are lazy hasn’t had the pleasure of getting to know Ahmad. The first intern in years that actually made it as an assistant engineer, while still studying at the Herman Brood academy. A heart of gold combined with the cuddliness of a Syrian sand cat and the work ethic of a horse, he’s the person every studio needs. Excellent in engineering your session and gifted with a great ear for sound and a sharp eye for your needs. Also highly recommended as a live engineer.
DIRECTIONS
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Tram 26 from Amsterdam Central station takes you to Rietlandpark in 6 minutes, from where it’s a one minute walk.
Tram 7 from Leidseplein takes you to Rietlandpark in 15 minutes.
BY CAR
Our recording studio is easy to reach as it’s located right off the Amsterdam A10 ring road. Take exit s114 and follow the signs for Centrum. When you exit the Piet Hein tunnel, take a right at the lights, next lights right again. This street is called Oostelijke Handelskade. After 300 meters the studio is on your right, opposite the Jumbo and next to the Lloyd Hotel, in the same building as Café-bar Fosco. There’s a Peroni sign on the corner of our building.
Parking
For easy parking after you’ve loaded in your gear, you can park your vehicle in the parking garage underneath shopping centre Brazilië. First 1,5 hour is free of charge, after that it’s €3 per hour. The parking garage closes at 22:00. Parking for longer than one day is possible within a five minute drive at P+R Zeeburg. The fee is €6 per day and the next by tram 26 takes you to Rietlandpark in just one stop.
HISTORY
since 1986
from punk squat to blues basement, brian eno, local indie favourites and all round ambient CREATIVE production studio. Also see our profile on discogs
1923 – THE QUARANTINE BUILDING
IJland Studio is located in the Eastern Docklands, a typical post-industrial urban area right at the IJ-lake.
This is where the Dutch post-colonialist shipping company Royal Dutch Lloyd loaded and unloaded their ships with goods -such as cocoa from Brazil to Amsterdam, and a workforce in the form of migrants from Eastern Europe looking for a better future accross the Atlantic.
These emigrants would stay in the main building (now The Lloyd Hotel), but wouldn’t just hop on a boat. The dirty travellers (read: valuable goods) needed to be washed and ‘quarantined’ for a few weeks in order to keep Brazil from strange virusses (read: to keep the workforce healthy). This was done in het Ontsmettingsgebouw (Quarantine Building), the same building where IJland Studio is now located.
What is now being used as the live room, people were working there butt off shoveling coal to heat the building. And Studio A, where musical recordings are fixed and freshened up, there used to be the laundry area. Come to think of it, not much has changed really…
1984 – SQUATTERS & PUNK ROCKERS
After the old shipyards were abandoned years of demise and the neglect of empty buildings after WWII came to an end when Amsterdam’s famous squatting scene inhabited the building. Amongst them being many punk rockers -a scene that remains to set foot in the city to this day, with great venues such as OT301, OCCII and De Nieuwe Anita-, it was no suprise that a few of them started to build a studio in the basement with materials from the Salvation Army, amongst them many old matrasses that still hide behind the walls. Starting of in 1985 as Studio Zwembad (Swimmingpool), due to famous Amsterdam water issues, the famous Dutch punk act Raggende Manne formed the epicentre of punk rock in the Netherlands. The water issue got tackled, the place re-named to IJland Studio, and when word got out of an amazing drum sound things quickly moved forward to being a professional studio.
2005 – ALL ROUND PRODUCTION STUDIO
After working as Pavement’s live engineer for almost twenty years and still being alive, Remko Schouten settled in IJland in 2005. By embracing the digital era whilst investing in good old analog attributes, IJland Studio succesfully survived its way into the next decade. Years of rock & roll resulted in the production of Stephen Malkmus’ Wig Out at Jagbags, but also the desperate need of a paint job. Companion Tim Visser entered the studio in 2018 to record himself, but ended up with the construction of an iso-booth in the live room and a vocal booth in Studio A, upgrading the recording facilities drastically. A wooden floor, extra windows between rooms and see-through doors connecting four separate spaces and thus the people recording, all majorly enhanced the workflow, joy and sound.
In 2024 Tim took over to continue the IJland Studio legacy and bringing it into the next era of music recording where hybrid en DIY production between home and studio is encouraged. Everybody should be able to use IJland Studio, expecially in times where a growing share of the revenue made by music is not going to the ones actually making it.
FRIENDS of IJLAND STUDIO
