El and Tim invite you to celebrate 10 years of Southsea Sound!

How tf did THAT happen?

TLDR? (too long didn’t read)

• A story about how and why we started. Some of this was initially in our news letter, but I’ve expanded upon it here. More pix! More facts!
• You’re invited to our birthday party, it’ll be mega, please come!!

And now…

Let me tell you a little story about how the studio got started.

In 2009, my Dad Nick Morgan passed away very suddenly. He was 22 days past his 60th birthday. He’d been a musician his whole life and, if you’ve ever seen me (El) perform anywhere, it’s his fault. He, like Tim, myself and all of our friends, had to work full time whilst making and touring music. Having me and my sister might have kaiboshed his live performance career, but he never stopped playing and brought both his children up to do the same.

Since the late 90s, Tim had almost exclusively been in punk and hardcore bands. Bullet Proof Cupid, Jets vs Sharks, When All Else Fails, You Me and the Atom Bomb, Ruin You, Southlands, New Architects, but also misery folk acts like Livers & Lungs (with me, Kelly Kemp from NoComply and Jack from Chillerton. That whole time, he’d also sit in his room for hours making Children of Bodom/DragonForce worship metal under the name Merge To Kill. Sadly, all online evidence of Livers & Lungs and Merge To Kill was lost in the great MySpace mass deletion scandel of 2019. Pop fact, possibly the worst whitey I ever pulled was at the 1997 Havant college battle of the bands where Bullet Proof Cupid were playing. Tim and I would not meet for another 5 years.

By 2011, Tim had been recording bands for years using whatever he could get his hands on. He eventually set up Darlington Studios in our house and from there engineered work for artists like Kelly Kemp, Sam Russo and various other DIY punk scene stalwarts.

It may have taken several years following Dad’s passing, but we started planning a studio business with its own premises and spaces for bands to rehearse. I’d always had it in my head that Dad didn’t get the chance to spend the pension he’d spent his whole life working to earn. It was hugely important to me to make something special happen with this crushingly horrible, once in a life time opportunity. After three years of searching for the right venue, we found a spot just a couple of hundred yards from The Wedgewood Rooms, off Albert Road. Perfect!

The first version of Southsea Sound was opened using equipment from Darlington Studios and gear we and our friends already owned (shout out to Ben Pescod for the 100 watt marshall JMP). We weren’t lugging it all around touring so much anymore and were pretty glad to get it out of the house.

We knew it had to be in the South of the city, somewhere safe and easy to walk to with food and nightlife around. Only problem? Portsmouth is one of the most densly populated cities in Europe and it’s very easy to bother people if you’re making any kind of noise.

Hence, the money mostly went on building costs, a floating concrete floor, building rooms within rooms to reduce frequency transmission and more rockwool and acoustic plasterboard than you can shake a massive bag of cans at.

What was the studio before it was Southsea Sound?

Room 1 was Ye Olde Bike Shoppe before it became Southsea Sound and, in the 90s, Matt Handley ran it as Hands On Records. Somewhere in there was a drum and bass collective who lost their license because they kept having huge parties and people were doing unthinkable things in the alleyway.

To return to the truely old school, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, these buildings were part of the Portsmouth Bakery network’s stable blocks. You can still see the outline of the barn doors on the top floor of one of the buildings, where hay and flour would have been loaded in from horse-drawn carts.

The building was in a bad way when we arrived. Work starting revealed damaged fire walls, rotten timbers and leaking roof. Had we known then what we do now, I wonder if we would have been brave enough to start.

 

From day one we reinvested all profit into new equipment. We wanted a space capable of producing world class audio so we wouldn’t need to go to London, Guildford or Brighton. We wanted that money to stay within the local economy and to contribute towards the scene HERE.

As well as a technical space for producing professional audio, we wanted to throw parties, release shows, weird noise artist events and karaoke nights like you have at your mates house rather than in some over-priced sparkly box. Finally, we needed a business name that could encompass all that. Production, engineering, events, anything really, as long as it made a noise. Southsea Sound was born.

And here we are ten years later. We’ve survived Brexit, a global pandemic, cowboy developer neighbours, energy crises and relentless austerity. We could NEVER have done it without our friends, family and the incredible Portsmouth and UK grassroots music scene. People buying our shirts was quite literally, the only thing that enabled us to stay open when the first lock down happened. No furlough and no help for the self employed until a couple of months had passed.

You know who you are you big sexy legends. We love you. THANK YOU.

So, from 2016 to 2026! With many of the projects we worked on in 2025 about to be released, and the studio, Tim, and Grrls to the Front all nominated in the Portsmouth Music Award for the second year running, things are looking good.

It would be amazing if you could vote for us. xox

Ok, so festival stuff…

The Southsea Sound Fest is set to become a yearly event showcasing some of the best DIY spirited grassroots bands in the UK and beyond. It’s an all ages event from 2 pm to 9.30 pm on Saturday the 28th of March. Loads of people have asked us about ticket prices and how to choose which ticket to go for.

This is our 10th birthday and we’ve decided on an honour payment system where you pay what you think is fair according to your circumstances. If you wouldn’t feel a serious pinch spending £15, that’s for you, if it would sting, then £10 is an option. If you’re a student, child or unemployed then there’s a £5 option. You’ll be able to make donations to bands inside too.

This is a not for profit event and all the money made either goes into the bands or is reinvested into next year’s event to make it bigger and better!

Fratton is the nearest train station, a 25 min walk or 5 min taxi. Last train to Southampton 22:58, last train to London 22:17, last train to Brighton 22:27.

 

We love you, we hope to see you soon! x El x Tim x