What It Is
玉成戲院錄音室 (YuChen Cinema Studio) is a professional recording studio built inside the gutted shell of 玉成戲院 (Yucheng Theater), a neighbourhood cinema that opened in December 1978 in western Nangang with two halls — the Gold Hall (金廳) and the Silver Hall (銀廳) — and a combined capacity of approximately 600 seats. In September 2001, Typhoon Nari struck Taipei with record flooding that destroyed the cinema's interior. Yucheng Theater never reopened. The building was sealed and left derelict for fifteen years.
In 2016, American recording and mixing engineer Andy Baker — who had worked in Taiwan's independent music scene since 2008, with credits including 滅火器 (Fire EX) and 董事長樂團 and multiple Golden Melody Award nominations — recognized the cinema's high concrete ceiling and raw internal volume as acoustic infrastructure that no purpose-built studio in Taipei possessed. He invested approximately NT$14.4 million and spent eighteen months on renovation, handling much of the design and construction himself. The studio opened in 2017. The original ticket booth, a vintage film projector, and the original bulletin-board frames remain at the entrance and in the hallway. The two recording rooms carry the old hall names.
In September 2024, the studio received the 評審團大獎 (Jury Grand Prize) in the Taipei Old House Renovation Award (台北老屋新生大獎), organized by the Taipei City Urban Regeneration Office — one of three works selected for the top prize alongside a National Historic Monument and a heritage street café.
Location
Address: No. 2, Lane 25, Yucheng Street, Nangang District (台北市南港區玉成街25巷2號) — no street signage visible from Yucheng Street
Nearest MRT: Houshanpi Station (後山埤站), Bannan Blue Line (BL20) — approximately 10–12 minutes on foot
Instagram: @yuchencinemastudio
Facebook: YuChen Cinema Studio (玉成戲院錄音室)
How to Visit
CINEMAPHONIC 拍片場 live concerts — free admission (免費索票). Baker and Taiwanese film director Alulu run a project filming live ensemble recording sessions with cinematic cameras. Periodically, a live audience is invited into the recording room to watch a session as it is filmed — a 90-minute event that is simultaneously a concert, a recording session, and a film shoot. Tickets are free; reservation is required. Check Facebook (CINEMAPHONIC Live Sessions) and Instagram (@yuchencinemastudio) for scheduled dates.
Open House Taipei — annual, typically November. The studio has previously opened for public tours combined with live band recording sessions during this city-wide architectural open-day programme. No ticket or reservation required during Open House days.
The CINEMAPHONIC Project
The CINEMAPHONIC series, launched in 2017, films live recording sessions at the studio and publishes them weekly to a dedicated YouTube channel. The 2024 season completed 7 live sessions and 4 live concert events, with approximately 600 audience members attending in person and over 250,000 cumulative views online. Artists in the archive span Taiwan's experimental, post-rock, and indie scenes — 昆蟲白, 五五身, 非人物種, 恐龍的皮, 溫蒂漫步, 赤楊, and several dozen others. A Manic Sheep live session was recorded and documented in January 2025.
Why It Is Unusual
Standard recording practice in Taiwan — as in most contemporary studios — is multi-tracking: each instrument is captured separately, in separate sessions, and assembled digitally. The acoustic property that makes YuChen different is the original cinema volume: the high concrete ceiling of the Gold Hall allows an entire ensemble — drums, guitars, bass, keys, horns, strings, vocals — to record simultaneously in one room, capturing the acoustic and dynamic chemistry of a live performance rather than a constructed approximation of one. No comparable facility existed in Taiwan before 2017.
The physical object of the building is the second layer. The original Yucheng Theater served a working-class Nangang neighbourhood through the cinema culture of the 1980s and 1990s, then was destroyed by flooding and left derelict through the 2000s and early 2010s. The renovation preserved the building's identity — ticket booth, projector, hall names — at the same moment it installed twenty-first-century recording infrastructure. The room in which a band records is identifiably the room in which Nangang residents watched films in 1985.
The studio sits in a low-rise residential block in western Nangang with no exterior signage. It is not discoverable by walking past it. It does not appear in Lonely Planet Taiwan, Timeout Taipei, or any mainstream English-language travel guide.
Verified currently operating: 2024 Taipei Old House Renovation Award Jury Grand Prize (MOT TIMES, September 2024; taipeiface.com 2024 winners listing); CINEMAPHONIC 2024 season recap (ININTOMUSIC, 2024 — 7 sessions, 4 concerts, 600 audience, 250,000+ views); Manic Sheep live session documented January 2025 (Space Echo / Chromewaves, published January 2026); Instagram @yuchencinemastudio active; CINEMAPHONIC YouTube channel ongoing.