A place of my own
Over the years, I’ve been involved with quite a few recording studios. I’ve owned them, co-owned them, worked in them, collaborated with them, and probably occupied a few roles that don’t even have proper names.
But there was always something missing.
Time.
Not the kind you book by the hour. The kind you can lose yourself in.
I’d be working on something, following an idea, exploring a sound, getting somewhere genuinely interesting — and then I’d have to stop. A client was coming in. There was work to be done. Someone else’s music needed my attention.
And that was perfectly reasonable. That’s what commercial recording studios are for.
The trouble is, creativity doesn’t particularly care about schedules.
You can’t always put an idea on hold and expect to find it waiting patiently when you return. Sometimes, once that moment is gone, it’s gone for good.
Worse still, I eventually realised that the frustration was affecting how I approached my clients. They hadn’t done anything wrong, yet I’d sometimes begin working with them already irritated because I’d been forced to abandon something of my own.
It wasn’t fair to them. And it wasn’t doing me any good either.
Eventually, I had to accept something about myself.
Making music and making money from music are two very different things.
Some people manage to combine them beautifully. I can’t. The moment money becomes a motivation, something in my creative process shuts down.
So I stopped trying to reconcile the two.
I needed a place where music could exist entirely on its own terms.
And, more importantly, on mine.
A rather long beginning
The earliest ancestor of Nucleus was a tiny room in the attic of my house.
Over the years, that attic went through all sorts of rearrangements. Rooms changed purposes, furniture moved, equipment came and went. But there was always some little corner reserved for making music.
In 2021, my work as a software developer required me to rent an office.
The first one was a small unit inside a shopping centre. Nothing particularly exciting, but it had one enormous advantage: I could make music there without bothering anyone, provided I didn’t get completely carried away.
For the first time, I had a space that was mine.
Six months later, a unit twice the size became available in the same building, and I moved in.
With more room came more equipment, more experiments, more ambitious arrangements, and increasingly serious work on the songs that would eventually become Unfinished.
For the first time, the album started to feel like something that might actually happen.
There was, however, one minor detail nobody had thought to mention.
The building had no air conditioning. Nor was there any possibility of installing it.
Spending a summer working in temperatures between 31 and 36°C wasn’t exactly conducive to creative enlightenment.
Then, in 2022, my friend Pik, a renowned music producer, decided to sell his Digidesign Control 24 console.
I wanted it.
Unfortunately, the console wanted considerably more room than I could comfortably give it.
I could have squeezed it into the office, but that would have meant doing my everyday development work practically on top of a recording console.
Clearly, something had to change.
Going underground
Within two days, almost by accident, I found a place in the very centre of Novi Sad, on the oldest street in the city.
It had two levels.
The ground floor could accommodate my everyday work, a proper office, and a kitchen — which, as anyone who knows me will confirm, was not a negotiable requirement.
And below it was a separate space that could be dedicated entirely to music.
No clients. No bookings. No interruptions.
Just a studio.
I moved in.
Then I spent approximately six months not making any music whatsoever.
The place needed serious work, and I wanted to do it properly. Walls, floors, sound insulation, furniture, wiring — the whole lot.
With help from friends, we built a custom desk for the console and the rest of the equipment. Pik’s Control 24 finally arrived and found its new home. A dedicated Mac was brought in to run the studio.
Piece by piece, everything came together.
I should also mention that none of this would have been quite the same without an extraordinarily supportive landlord, who has since become a friend, and some genuinely wonderful neighbours.
Having people around you who understand and respect what you’re trying to do is worth more than I can adequately express.
By the end of October 2022, the studio was finally ready.
And something rather remarkable happened.
Everything, everywhere, all at once
For years, I’d been collecting ideas, starting projects, abandoning arrangements, returning to old songs, and wondering whether some of them would ever become anything more than elaborate demos.
Suddenly, there was nothing stopping me.
Songs that had barely moved in years started developing at an astonishing pace. New compositions appeared. Old ones changed direction. Arrangements were dismantled and rebuilt, sometimes several times in a single day.
I could follow an idea wherever it led, for however long it took.
Or I could do absolutely nothing.
And that turned out to be just as important.
Sometimes I switch everything off, turn out the lights, and lie on the sofa in complete darkness.
No instruments. No screens. No sound.
Just thinking.
Occasionally, those moments produce something more valuable than hours spent in front of a recording session.
For the first time, I had a place that allowed me to explore everything I might be capable of, without having to explain myself, justify the time, or worry about what came next.
It wasn’t simply a better working environment.
It was freedom.
What’s in a name?
For a while, the studio didn’t actually have one.
I considered calling it Defy, but quickly abandoned the idea.
Then came Stendahl, which seemed rather appropriate until I remembered there was a dreadful bar with the same name less than a hundred metres away. I had absolutely no desire to be associated with it.
Eventually, I decided that perhaps the studio didn’t need a name at all.
After all, it wasn’t a business. I wasn’t looking for clients, and I had no intention of attracting any.
Then, one day, I was talking to my old friend QuiQui.
We used to play together in a band called Hiqulus, where the two of us were involved in practically everything: composing, arranging, visual art, planning, and whatever else needed doing.
During our conversation, he casually described the two of us as the band’s creative nucleus.
And there it was.
Nucleus.
I knew immediately.
Because that’s exactly what this place had become.
The centre of everything I create. The place where ideas are born, developed, questioned, destroyed, rebuilt, and sometimes finally allowed to exist.
Where everything begins.
And where everything ends.
More than a studio
Nucleus has never been just a room full of expensive equipment.
It’s where I laugh, cry, think, read, argue, philosophise, celebrate, occasionally drink too much, and sometimes simply fall apart.
It’s also where I put myself back together.
I invite people here, but I choose those people carefully. Not because the studio is some exclusive club, but because the atmosphere we’ve created here matters enormously to me.
The friends and musicians who visit seem to understand that. They treat the place with a kind of affection and respect that I find genuinely moving.
And I think that’s because they understand what Nucleus represents.
It’s my sanctuary. My playground. My workshop. My refuge.
It’s the one place where I never have to be anything other than myself.
And Unfinished simply wouldn’t exist in its present form without it.
Not because of the console, the microphones, the instruments, or the software.
But because, after all these years, I finally found somewhere I could give my creativity all the room it needed.
Even when that meant doing absolutely nothing.
Welcome to Nucleus.