Paper V.U. Studios is a privately run, smaller recording studio operated by Dylan “3-D” Dresdow. While smaller in size than the typical Los Angeles sound motel, it includes some of the greatest gear in the world, bringing together state of the art digital gear to custom modified analog gear.
Grammy nominated tracking and mixing engineer Dylan “3-D” Dresdow was born and grew up in Lakeland, Florida. Early on he gravitated toward music; at age 7 he began playing the drums, and by age 13 he was doing session work as a studio drummer. After graduating P.C.C. in Lakeland & Winter Haven FL with a degree in Multimedia Technology, Dylan attended Full Sail’s school for the Recording Arts in Winter Park, FL, graduating in 1997. He drove cross country to further his career in music, landing a runner position at the world renowned Enterprise Studios in Burbank, CA. Noting his natural abilities, his employer quickly grew his responsibilities as he began assisting and tracking for the studio within six months.
Shortly after, he was asked to assist the legendary mix engineer, Dave “Hard Drive” Pensado. While assisting Dave, Dylan worked on projects for Sisqó, Destiny’s Child, and Brian McKnight. Herb Trawick, McKnight’s manager at the time, dubbed Dylan with the nickname “3-D”, stemming from the fact that Dylan had 3 d’s in his name. This nickname took on additional meaning when, after a year, 3-D left the Pensado nest and his mixes began gaining popularity for their width and dimension.
Dylan quickly began racking up platinum credits working for such artists as Ice Cube, Coolio, Redman, Method Man, TLC, and the Wu Tang Clan. In 2002, he gained more notoriety when he contributed to the cover of “Lady Marmalade” performed my Christina Aguilera, Pink, Mya, Lil Kim, and Missy Elliot, which won one grammy out of 3 nominations at the 2003 Grammy Awards, and was also nominated for a Tec award. The next year he worked on “Elephunk” by the Black Eyed Peas, which was nominated in the Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and highly coveted Best Engineered Non-Classical categories.
To satisfy today’s champagne requests on a beer budget, Dylan decided to open his own place in 2006- Paper V.U. Studios located in the Burbank/North Hollywood CA area. At Paper V.U., he can work on the projects he wants to by cutting costs without cutting corners on quality. He’s mixed many hit artists there including Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, The Game, Nas, Ciara, Talib Kweli, Macy Gray, Bone Thugs & Harmony, Herbie Hancock, Fatlip, Ricky Martin, The Tree Brains, and many more. As a freelance engineer, Dylan still commonly works at places like the The Record Plant, Larabee, The Villiage Recorder, and the Hit Factory/Criteria, but generally prefers to work out of his custom-built studio which combines the strengths of vintage and customized analog gear with the state of the art cutting edge digital gear.
Some of 3-D’s discography can be found at these links:
Barnes and Noble or All Music