Overheard in Greenpoint: Python Patrol

“Hey, want to see the really cool room?” asked Ben Greenberg with a sly grin, his long, slender frame casting a subtle shadow against the brick wall of the dimly lit hallway in the basement of St. Cecilia’s. He leads me into a tiled room that looks as if it may have once been a classroom of some sort.

“Listen,” he says excitedly, and claps his hands. The sound rings out and carries, bouncing off the walls of the empty room before fading into silence. The acoustics are incredible. “I use this room for reverb sometimes.”

I follow Greenberg back into the hallway, and take a turn, into a large, high-ceilinged room decorated sparsely with band posters and album covers, and lined with a couple of old, beat-up couches. He stands in the center of the room, at a long table covered with amplifiers and microphones, wires and a laptop computer, and leans over to adjust the sound on a pair of speakers. Welcome to Python Patrol, Greenpoint’s own one-man recording studio.

Named after the now defunct Boy Scout troupe that used to occupy the building when it was a grammar school, Python Patrol is run solely by 24-year-old Greenberg, who has been playing and recording music steadily for the past 10 years out of various apartments throughout Brooklyn. The studio is housed in one large room, though oftentimes Greenberg makes use of the other empty rooms St. Ceclia’s has to offer. Since the grammar school closed a couple of years ago, St. Cecilia’s has converted the space into a center for the arts, offering affordable spaces to musicians, artists and recording engineers. Greenberg set up his studio on August 15th, and has been busy ever since, recording everything from free jazz ensembles to punk rock bands, in the church’s basement.

“It’s an insanely perfect situation—it’s stunning. And it’s amazing what they’ve done with the place since the school closed,” Greenberg said.

Before moving into the basement of St. Cecilia’s, Greenberg worked out of his most recent home studio in Bushwick, affectionately named Bulletproof Chinese in honor of the bulletproof glass that protects most of the neighborhood’s Chinese restaurants. He shared the studio with his five roommates, who collectively played in eight different bands, and expressed that the move to St. Cecilias—and into his very own studio—was a very welcome change. In addition to the luxury of having his own studio, the space in St. Cecilia’s also affords Greenberg the opportunity to run a business on his own terms, without having to answer to any higher authority. He is, in essence, his own boss.

“I’m much more comfortable working outside of standard procedure,” Greenberg said. “I went to a prestigious high school in the Bronx, and when I catch up with my old classmates they are all making $150,000 working in the financial district or something. They are all fully integrated. But that was never particularly attractive to me. So, to find a way to record music that is so ideologically tied into how I live my life as a musician allows me the comfort of not having to answer to anyone…except the Catholic Church of course!”

During Greenberg’s five months at Python Patrol, he has recording nearly 9 full-length albums. He also uses his studio space to rehearse with his two bands, Zs and Pygmy Shrews, and maintains that, while there’s nothing more convenient than having a studio in your basement, the St. Cecilia’s space is something of a godsend.

“This city is both great and terrible for musicians,” Greenberg said, referring to the high cost of renting practice spaces. “And having this place has solved 90 per cent of my difficulties. I’m so lucky. And though it’s nice to go downstairs and hit record whenever you have an idea, the bike ride from my house to St. Cecilia’s helps me refine my ideas. There’s a lot of time flexibility and freedom that comes attached.”

However, Greenberg’s Do-It-Yourself ethic—and aesthetic—does not usurp his sense of professionalism. Most of all, he believes in working in the interests of the artists he records—he wants to make them as comfortable as possible while recording, and ensure that they are completely satisfied with the results.

“I want the bands to be comfortable, and make the records that they want to make, the way that they want to make them. I’m just helping them do it.”