Nestled right in the heart of Fishtown is a nondescript door. Behind it are many things—circuits, wires and microphones of all shapes and sizes. But most importantly there is potential behind that door.

Years ago, when he was around twelve years old Alex Santilli heard Revolver by The Beatles. It’s the first time he remembers ever hearing music. Coming from what Santilli describes as a “music-free household” the sonic landscape created by The Fab Four offered a stark contrast.

“It’s not something I could have ever fathomed existed,” Santilli said of the experience.  “It’s like seeing a skyscraper for the first time when you’ve seen only houses. It’s just so mind blowing.”

The reason music became important to Santilli is simple, he says “it communicates a human experience in a way that only that kind of media can.”

A few years after hearing Revolver, Santilli began a decade long quest to create the perfect listening experience. He found that better speakers allowed him to be more immersed in the music, so Santilli began building his own and pushing their sonic capabilities as far as he could. Eventually he hit a wall.

Once I got to a certain level I realized that records just stop sounding better the more I upgrade,” Santilli said. “The more I’d build new things; the more I’d come up with new ideas. And I was like, ‘I should probably start making records. I think I know how to do that better [too].’”

These experiences led him to his seat in a chair behind this unremarkable door. The chair is sat in front of a console that Santilli found, face down, unloved in the first recording studio he worked at. He was tasked with fixing it.

“Of course I had no idea how to do it but I was like ‘I’ll do it,’” Santilli said. “I worked hard on it and I read everything I could and it took a while before I got it up and running. Then I spent years rebuilding it and modifying it and making it even better than it was.”

Just as Santilli saw the potential in that console he sees the same thing here in Philadelphia, particularly in Fishtown.

“This is a fantastic place for artists to live. I tell people that Philadelphia, and Fishtown especially, are the best places for them to live,” Santilli said. “That’s why I say it’s a cultural revolution going on. There is absolutely amazing artistic stuff coming out of Philly. That’s so awesome and exciting. I can’t wait for the next couple of years. It’s just going to be growing and growing and growing.”

Potential can be a dirty word in a neighborhood like ours. It’s filled with connotations and implications. It brings to mind tearing down to build anew. It draws thought to displacing what is current so that it can be done better.  It doesn’t have to mean an improvement on what is already there, it can be an awakening of the talent, skills and potential of all of the people already there.

Look at the way Santilli thinks of the equipment he restores.

“The way I like to look at it is if they had infinite time to design any piece of equipment it would be the most incredible thing ever. But they’re limited by time and budget,” Santilli said. “So I like to imagine that I take the [original engineer’s] idea of what it should have been and try to bring the piece of equipment to that.”

He is not just replacing parts indiscriminately. He re-approaches the object with more tools and less constraints than the original creator. That allows him, not to find the potential in an unsatisfactory piece of equipment, but to elevate it to the place it should have been in the first place.

That is the true power of potential— not a blatant destruction of the past but, instead, a reimagining of what was into what should have been.

This chair in front the console behind the nondescript door lies at the heart of a state of the art recording studio, Spice House Sound.

Formerly an empty garage space, the space has been transformed. With the help of world-renowned architect John Storyk, Santilli created a space that is at once intentionally perfect and imperfect. The equipment, most of which Santilli rebuilt himself, is as perfect as possible, but he didn’t want that perfection to seep into the aesthetics.

“That’s why I chose all this rough wood flooring. All the audio, everything is so exact and precise in here, I don’t want the place to feel that way,” Santilli said. “I want a place were people feel like they can make mistakes, have happy accidents and see what happens.”

Aside from being comfortable and acoustically sound, the space is also incredibly variable. The size of a room impacts the sound and feel of a recording dramatically. Santilli knew from the start that he would need a way to make one room sound like everything from a large hall to a small, intimate room. To accomplish this Santilli and the designers at Walters-Storyk Design Group outfitted Spice House with a lot of tools. Most of the walls open like cabinets and can be set up to either reflect or dampen sound. There is a one of a kind ceiling cloud above the space to shrink the sound even more when it is in place or allow the resonance of the full 16,000 cubic feet when it is not in use.

There are other recording studios in Philadelphia. I’m not sure if they are as good or better than Spice House. That’s not for me to say. But Santilli’s vision and the location of the studio may be what gives them a leg up.

“[There] wasn’t a place where everyone in Philly could go and make a world class, amazing recording where the sky is the limit. And that’s what I wanted to give everybody,” Santilli said. “If I built this anywhere else I feel like it wouldn’t be as appreciated. Here, It’s like accessible to just about anybody”

“Especially in this first year or two I really want all of my favorite people to come in here so we can be like, ‘this is amazing. Here it is, World.’ I want this to become a conduit to something larger.”

It is possible that Santilli’s aspirations of something larger are very possible. John Storyk, one of the people responsible for the design of the studio, brings with him a special pedigree. Storyk was responsible for the design of Electric Lady Studios, a Greenwich Village recording studio started by Jimi Hendrix. While Hendrix himself only recorded there briefly before his death the space was later used by musicians like Bob Dylan, The Clash and even Philadelphia’s own Hall & Oates.

By no means is pedigree alone enough to create something great. All the lineage and education in the world can still falter. But now Fishtown and Philadelphia has no excuse. Behind that nondescript door a stone’s throw away from Saint Laurentius Church lies our potential. Santilli and Spice House Sound provide the tools for the musicians of our city to create something amazing. We have no excuses.