Russian Recording

New Site

After more than two years in the making, the new Russian Recording website is finally online. We couldn't be happier with how it turned out, and it was well worth the wait. We would like to thank Lane Fujita for his hard work, the insane hours he's put into the site and of course for the amazing ideas and overall design. This is all his work, he's a total badass.

Be sure to check out the updated Audio Page, we've uploaded over 70 new tracks which are now organized by musical style to make it easier to hear our work in the style that interests you or best fits your own musical taste. The new tour page has beautiful photos (by William Winchester Claytor) and detailed descriptions of our facilities. Our gear page has been updated with all of our newest additions (listed below), and we've also added a Space Rental section to our Rates page if you're interested in renting out the studio for an event.

NEW GEAR

Mike Stucker of Wolfgang Michael Sound has been working on modifying and updating our recently acquired Sphere Eclipse Alpha Series II console. He's added an inline monitor path to the board, recapped every card and EQ, added more routing flexibility, new switches and pots, installed custom engraved face plates for all the new features and cleaned up the signal path. He will also be installing all new faders, polarity reversal on every channel and new phantom power switches in the near future. The new modifications and improvements have made this amazing sounding console a real pleasure to work on, considerably more reliable and more conducive to the workflow of a modern recording session.

We've also added some pretty amazing new gear to our racks, mic cabinet and instrument/amp collection. Some of our newly acquired pieces include the Thermionic Culture Phoenix variable-mu valve compressor, a Tonelux Equalux equalizer, a KUSH Audio Clariphonic parallel equalizer, a Manley ELOP limiter, UBK Fatso compressor, the Electrical Audio EAPre 2 channel microphone preamp, a stereo pair of Coles 4038 ribbon microphones, a pair of Beyer M160 ribbon microphones, an Earth 59 Bassman copy combo, and several other amps and instruments. For a complete list of our equipment selection, check out our Gear page.

NEW GUY

We've got a new guy working at the studio now. He goes by Mike Kapinus because that's his real name. Mike is available for hire as a session engineer and also runs the PA at our events. Mike has played with many local and touring bands including Magnolia Electric Co, Throwing Stars, Whippoorwill, The Hollows and surely a whole bunch of others. He also sings opera and in choirs and stuff, and is an amazing multi-instrumentalist. He's done live sound all over town for years and now he's doing it here. Let us know if you would like to book a session with this super cool dude.

Recent Projects

In the past year we've been honored to have worked on a handful of great records from local, regional and national artists. Here are some of the records that we worked on that have either come out or been completed since our last update in 2011:

• Release The Sunbird — "Come Back To Us" LP (Brushfire Records) — recorded


• Release The Sunbird — "Imaginary Summer" EP (Brushfire Records) —recorded


• Murder By Death — "Split w/The Builders and The Butchers" 7in EP — recorded, mixed


• Murder By Death — "Come As You Are: A 20th Anniversary Tribute To Nirvana's Nevermind" CD Compilation — recorded, mixed (Lounge Act)


• Tig Notaro — "Good One" LP (Secretly Canadian) — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Good Luck — "Without Hesitation" LP (No Idea Records) — recorded, mixed


• High Dive — "High Dive" LP (No Idea Records) — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Parlor —"s/t" LP (Let's Pretend Records) — recorded, mixed


• The Open Sex — "(is not a cult)" Cassette (Auris Apothecary) — recorded, mixed


• Memory Map — "Holiday Band" LP (Joyful Noise Recordings) — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Memory Map — "Yamato-damashi" EP (Joyful Noise Recordings) — recorded, mixed


• Tammar — "Visits" LP (Suicide Squeeze) - recorded


• Jookabox — "Eyes of the Fly" LP (Asthmatic Kitty) — recorded


• EDM (Early Day Miners) — "Night People" LP (Western Vinyl) — recorded, mixed


• Elephant Micah — "Louder Than Though" LP — mixed, mastered


• Brett Eugene Ralph's Kentucky Chrome Revue — "In a Human Body" LP — recorded, mixed


• Natives — "Natives" EP — recorded, mixed


• Destroy This Place — "Resurrect the Mammoth" LP — recorded, mixed


• The Hollows — "Sweetie" — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Dreamers of the Ghetto — "Enemy/Lover" LP (Temporary Residence) — recorded


• Sleeping Bag — "Sleeping Bag" LP (Joyful Noise Recordings) — recorded, mixed (SLIME), mastered


• Fat Shadow — "Foot of Love" LP (Houseplant Records) — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Pink Houses — "10in split w/Snarlas" EP — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Calumet Reel — "The Calumet Reel" LP — recorded, mixed


• She Does Is Magic — "S/T" (Flannelgraph Records) LP — mixed, mastered


• Very Happy — "All the Times" EP — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Sitar Outreach Ministry — "S/T" LP — mixed


• Traveling — "End of the Summer" (No Idea Records) 7in EP — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Snaarj — "Levels" LP — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Beaker — "S/T" LP — recorded, mixed, mastered


• Man Forever — "Man Forever" LP (St. Ives Records) — recorded, mixed

CURRENT AND UPCOMING PROJECTS

We are looking forward to our upcoming and current projects including:

• Recording and producing the new Sleeping Bag LP


• Recording and producing a new record with Cleveland's American Werewolves (the first band to have recorded at RR back in 2003)


• New record with Carbondale, IL's Skinny Jim and the Number 9 Blacktops


• Mastering the Apache Dropout CD re-issue (with live recording from RR) and their new LP of old recordings "Magnetic Heads"


• Finishing up the Pirate Flags album


• Finishing up the new Memory Map LP


• Continuing work on a new EP and LP with Cincinnati's The Weakness


• Completing tracking and mixing with Fourth Wife


• Recording and mixing a new The Open Sex LP


• Continued work on a new album from The Just


• Mixing the first Ancient Slang EP

If you are interested in bringing your recording project here for tracking, mixing, mastering or all of the above, we'd be happy to talk about your specific needs and answer any questions you might have.

RR CABLE CO.

We've started our very own custom high-end cable manufacturing company called RR Cable Co. Our cables are carefully handmade at the studio using the best parts and materials. We make any type of music or audio related cable - instrument, microphone, speaker, home stereo, iPod, patch cables, snakes, studio wiring or any custom cable configuration.

Our instrument and mic cables come in two different series, Gold Series and Silver Series, and they are available in a wide variety of colors. You can get our cables locally at Vance Music and Melody Music or you can visit the website and order directly from us. We are currently working on an online store and hope to have that up and running by the middle of this summer. In the meantime you can shoot us an email with any questions or to place an order.

Shows & Events

We are excited to be able to offer the studio to be rented out for shows and special events. For more information on renting the space out for an event, please read about it here. We have had the pleasure of hosting everything from rock shows to Christmas parties to weddings in the past year. Here are some of our upcoming events:

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Holographic — Bloomington's New Music Project

featuring original contemporary classical compositions performed by:

JSoM students

Doors — 7:30 pm

Music — 8:00 pm

FREE

All Ages

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Bomb the Music Industry

Traveling

Point Dume

Doors — 8:30 pm

Music — 9:00 pm

$5

All Ages

Friday, April 20th, 2012

Glory Hole Records 420 Showcase with:

TV Ghost

Apache Dropout

Three Man Band

Vacation Club

Punk Talk

Learner Dancer

Doors — 7:00 pm

Music — 7:30 pm

$5

All Ages

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

Gauntlet Hair

Pictureplane

Doors — 8:30 pm

Music — 9:00 pm

$12/$10 advance from www.spiritof68promotions.com

All Ages

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

The Hollows

TBA…

Doors — 8:30 pm

Music — 9:00 pm

Saturday, May 26th, 2012

Damien Jurado

JBM

Mike Adams at His Honest Weight

Doors — 8:30 pm

Music — 9:00 pm

$12/$10 advance from www.spiritof68promotions.com

All Ages

The doors will open at 8:00 pm and the show/broadcast will start promptly at 9:00 pm. See you there!

The extremely rare and sought after Sphere Eclipse consoles are the direct descendants of the legendary Electrodyne and Quad Eight boards of the 50's, 60's and 70's... all designed by Don McLaughlin, and are considered one of the best sounding analog desks ever made, on par with Neve, API, Helios, etc. Each of the 50 Sphere consoles ever built (yes, only 50 ever made!) were handmade, and used improved component designs based on the best of the Electrodyne series, and were one of the first consoles to employ an inline monitoring design and relay controlled mute groups and input switching. There are only approximately 19 of these legendary consoles left, as most of the others have been parted out.

Our Eclipse A is a 24 channel, 16 buss inline console, and can accommodate 48 channels on mix down. The board is loaded with twenty five M1200 microphone preamplifiers (one is for the talkback), twenty 900 Series inductor based graphic EQs, and four 1322 inductor based shelving/peak EQs. Every output (2-mix, busses, cue sends, aux sends) uses a discreet op-amp card with custom wound Reichenbach transformers (now called Cinemag). The preamps use Jensen input transformers.

You can read more about the history of Sphere, Electrodyne and Quad Eight from Larry Devivo's article published in TapeOp Magazine here:

The History of Electrodyne, Quad Eight and Sphere

Russian Recording's Sphere Eclipse is one of the first ones made, with hand drawn schematics dating as early as 1972, with most of them dating 1974. Apparently the first Sphere console was sold to the White House in D.C. in 1975, but based on our paperwork we wonder if ours was actually the first... after all, from a marketing standpoint it does sound cooler to say the first one was sold to the goddamn White House. This board was originally built for Combine Music in Nashville, TN, a division of EMI Publishing, and then relocated to Bloomington's Echo Park Studios in 1995. In the Fall of 2010 we tore down the wall between our control room and the great outdoors to load it into Russian Recording.

When we decided to install the new console, we felt it was necessary to upgrade our outboard rack to compliment the new setup. Since we now have 24 channels of awesome outboard preamps and EQs in the Sphere, we sold some of our outboard preamps and EQs to upgrade our compressor and microphone collection. Here is a list of our new additions:

-Manley ELOP stereo/dual mono electro-optical limiter

-Charter Oak SCL-1 stereo/dual mono compressor

-KUSH Audio UBK Fatso stereo/dual mono compressor, high frequency limiter and saturation generator

-Studio Electronics C2S stereo/dual mono 1176 style compressor with Neve output stage

-Charter Oak PEQ-1 stereo program mastering equalizer

-(2) x Coles 4038 ribbon microphones (stereo matched pair)

-(2) x Charter Oak E700 LD FET condenser microphones (stereo matched pair)

We couldn't be more enthused with the upgrade. The console sounds absolutely incredible... the preamps and EQ are deluxe, and the sound of the mixer itself is extremely musical... we have never heard low frequencies sound this tight and focused, and translate so well to other listening environments... it sounds downright FLATTERING. It has to be those output transformers. The addition of the new outboard equipment has also proven to be a huge asset, and provides more options and greater flexibility in the record-making process. Also, we installed a window in the control room, which may seem like icing on the cake, but might just be the single most valuable improvement... at least to my well being.

But now it's 2010, which is pretty weird and totally exciting. And 2010 is looking pretty darn good. January is pretty much booked solid, with a few openings:

Fri, January 22
Tues, January 26
Thurs, January 28

During the month of January we will be working on records with Pink Houses, Canary Coal Miners, Trio In Stereo, Zack Norris, Prizzy Prizzy Please, Cosmetics, Glass Halo, Audio Earth, Stak Black Daniels, and Tammar.

February is looking good too, and there are still some dates and blocks available, as of now we have the following dates open:

Mon-Fri, February 1-5
Sun-Mon, February 14-15
Wed-Thurs, February 17-18
Wed-Fri, February 24-26
Sunday, February 28

In February we will be working on records with Universe, Cosmetics, Applecore, Imperial Can and Lucky Pineapple.

March is still completely open, now is a good time to book dates in March, cause it's prime record making time. Also baby making time. April is already booking up, but still has many open dates.

We are still going to be hosting occasional shows at the studio. So far there are a few cool shows lined up for 2010, and as always EVERYBODY IS INVITED!:

Thursday, January 14th
Prizzy Prizzy Please
w/Holiday Band
$5
Doors at 8:00 pm

Saturday, February 27th
Spirit of '68 Promotions Presents:
Balmorhea
w/EP Hall

In other news, we should be getting the site updated with new photos and a sleeker look within the next couple months.

I hope everyone, including myself, has a really wonderful year.

1. NEW CHEAPER RATES!

• $400/day (for 3 days or less)


• $350/day (for 4 days or more)


• $50/hr


• $5 per minute of audio for Mastering

• $300/day


• $40/hr

• $250/day (for 3 days or less)


• $200/day (for 4 days or more)

2. Super Dave!

3. NUVO Article

• I love what I do, and although I said I probably won't ever make a bunch of money doing it, that's not something that bothers me. I don't do it for money. I do it because I love working with bands and I take pride in helping them make the best recording possible. I went into this knowing that I wasn't going to make a bunch of money. I just want to be able to keep providing excellent service and be able to afford food for my cats and myself.


• I am not thinking about selling the studio. And I'm not looking for a "regular job". I would rather shoot myself in the foot.


• The decision to host shows at the studio was not because I needed supplemental income. In fact, shows at the studio actually end up costing money, but they are something I enjoy. Because of a lack of musical venues in Bloomington at the time, I decided to provide a place to host shows that otherwise may not have happened. And contrary to what the article said, the studio was not solely a live music venue since March. I worked on over 20 records in that time period.

4. New Recordings, and recent projects

• Wackbards: "Battleship Forever"



• The Delicious: "Combustion"



• We Are Hex: "Gold/Silver"



• Laura K. Balke: "Telephone Lines"



• Gods On Safari: "Post-Modern House Factory Blues"



• Tree City Allstars: "No Illusion"



• Tremendous Fucking: "Daddy"



• Throwing Stars: "Alligators"



• Pink Houses: "Take It Back"

5. New Website In Progress

6. Live Shows and Concerts

7. New Gear and Equipment Upgrades

• (2) vintage Sennheiser MD421s



• (2) Beyer M88s



• (2) Audio Technica ATM450s



• Audio Technica AT4047


Some friends have donated some cool stuff to be used at the studio as well:


• Airline "59 Custom 3P electric guitar



• USA made Fender Telecaster



• Gibson Les Paul Special



• Kramer aluminum neck V-Bass



• Gibson Les Paul Junior tube combo amp



• Fender Princeton Reverb II



• Traynor Mono Bloc Bass head



• Dynaco Echocord Mini tape delay

'We Just Call It Roulette: Volume Two' CD Release Show

live performances from:

MEDUSA

CHILD BITE (detroit)

BEYOND THINGS

Russian Recording

1021 South Walnut Street

Bloomington, IN 47401

9:00 pm

$6 Admission includes a copy of the CD

About the CD:

After over one and a half years of preparation, Russian Recording is finally releasing the second volume of “We Just Call It Roulette”, a compilation of various styles of music recorded at the studio in the past couple years. The compilation was carefully and painstakingly sequenced, arranged and mastered to be much more than just a “demo reel” and more like a cohesive album that can be enjoyed from beginning to end, and serves to promote not only the studio, but also the bands that appear on it and the artists that were involved with the packaging. The CD is still packaged in the same fancy die-cut matchbook design with magnetic snaps, but with completely different artwork and design.

In the same tradition as the first compilation (designed by Jarod Isenbarger of Morrow), the artwork for the new packaging was designed by a member of one of the featured bands, whose song appears first on the compilation and is exclusive to the CD. "We Just Call It Roulette: Volume Two” was designed by Shawn Knight, lead singer and guitarist for the Detroit band Child Bite. In addition to Child Bite’s “Good Arm Getter”, there are two more exclusive songs on the CD: “Noel’s Got a Chord” by Austrian band Valina, and a very special version of The Band’s “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”, recorded by The Cover Band in memory of our dear friend Evan Farrell.

The CD has 14 tracks from 14 bands, some local and some that are as far away as Austria and Africa, with styles ranging from traditional Zimbabwean music to heavy metal. In order to make such a broad range of music a more cohesive listening experience, many of the tracks (even those that were previously released on other albums) were re-mastered specifically for this compilation.

The complete track listing is as follows:

Child Bite 'Good Arm Getter'

Medusa 'Wicked Father'

Everthus the Deadbeats 'First Time Again'

Sheasby Matiure and the Mbira Queens 'Zvipo Zvamwari'

Lafcadio 'Freewillyneslonmandela'

Defiance, Ohio 'Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop'

Kentucky Nightmare 'Ways of the Gods'

Trio in Stereo 'She’s Not a Robot'

Sump Pumps 'The Mechanical'

Valina 'Noel’s got a Chord'

Beyond Things 'When What Was Wrong Was Wrong'

Prizzy Prizzy Please 'Thundergust of Woodpeckers'

King Harvest (Has Surely Come) 'The Cover Band'

Some of the songs appearing on the compilation can be heard on the Russian Recording website (higher quality) or on the Russian Recording Myspace page (more songs, poor sound quality).

Only 500 copies of the compilation were made, each of them hand silk-screened by and die cut by Ryan Nole at Kangaroo Press, and carefully assembled and numbered at the studio. They are free with admission at the release show, which will be held at Russian Recording on Saturday, March 28th, 2009. The show will feature live performances from three of the bands that appear on the compilation: Child Bite, Medusa, and Beyond Things. After March 28th, copies will also be available for the price of manufacture ($7) directly from the studio, as well as at Landlocked Music and TD’s CDs and LPs in Bloomington, IN.

The new space has exceeded my expectations. All of the tracking rooms sound great, and each room has it's own unique sound. Everything is working as it should and it's just a real pleasure to make records here.

I'm getting booked up prety far in advance, with almost all weekends booked until the end of February. But there are still plenty of dates open starting next week, including some weekends and plenty of weekdays.

I am really excited to make records in the new place.... so if you want to make one please get in touch.

Im going on tour with Push-Pull starting today, November 1st through Sunday November 9th. In the meantime Mike Dixon is recording Prayer Breakfast at the studio while im gone.

But feel free to give me a call about booking time, or send me a message here or via email....

russianrecording (at) hotmail (dot) com

812-327-7939


thanks

mike

You can see photos of the new place on the home page slide show. I will eventually update the tour pages and also post some audio samples from the space.

There will be a grand opening party on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3rd:

I want to post photos of the progress, but it's so close that i just want to wait and show it when it's done. The studio should be finished up and ready to go on September 11th, which will be the first day of recording with our band Push-Pull.

I have already started booking for september and october. There are plenty of dates available so get in touch if interested.

Finally after 5 years of being located in beautiful Brown County, IN, I've decided to move the studio into Bloomington ..... I have also decided to quit my full time position at the IU School of Music to pursue this record making thing full time.

The new location for the studio is the building formerly known as The Art Hospital (which is moving down the block to a new location), which was formally known as the Secretly Canadian headquarters.

The past 4 months have been spent carefully designing rooms for optimal acoustics, sound isolation, eye-to-eye contact and aesthetics. Dimensionally accurate 3D images have been added to my photos.

Many people have come up to me and asked, "Why are you putting a studio in there? it always sounds so awful when they have shows". The building is actually perfectly suited for an amazing recording studio. In its current state it's just a cavernous space... add to that an underpowered PA, bands that play too loud and small audiences and it ends up a wash of ambience. The new plans will split thespace into 3 new tracking rooms and a control room. The tracking rooms will be vary in size. The live room will have a big lush natural ambience, the live isolation room will have a more focused ambient sound (similiar to the old studio's live room) and the dead isolation room will be acoustically dry.

The new studio will be dividing the huge space into 5 new rooms, all specifically designed to have ideal acoustical dimensions (except for the lounge, which will sound pretty crappy i imagine):
-Live Room (approximately 23' x 28', 17' ceiling)
-Live Isolation Room (approximately 10' x 11' with 13.5' ceiling)
-Dead Isolation Room (9' x 10' with 12' ceiling)
-Control Room (13' x 16' with 11.5' ceiling)
-Lounge (32' x 20' with 8' ceiling)

There's a lot going on right now. I can't really talk about it cause I don't want to jinx myself. But as of now every weekend's booked up until August, with the exception of two weekends which can be booked with one our recommended freelance engineers, and I currently can't book anything after that until I know what's going on.

I'm hoping to get the ball rolling on the new comp too, so there should some more news on that eventually.

Oh yeah, and THIS FRIDAY, April 25: two awesome CD release shows of records that I was fortunate enough to record...

The Delicious EP "Pre-Release", "Postcard to My Sewing Circle"
Art Hospital
8:00 pm
w/Abner Trio, Bussman's Holiday and Amo Joy

Tremendous Fucking CD Release, "More Blood in the Monitors"
Uncle Fester's
10:00 pm
w/Bolth, Sump Pumps and Phantom Cruisers

go to these.

love mike

For the most part 2007 was pretty sweet. Since i spent Xmas eve and Xmas preparing my taxes, i was also able to throw some stats together for the studio in 2007. In 2007 we worked on over 40 records and had 204 days booked. That's about all the stats i felt like gathering.

We Just Call It Roulette V.II is in the works. The bands have been chosen. Sean Knight from Child bite will be designing the cover art. I plan on having it come out early next fall, and once again there will be a CD Release show for it. I'm excited that there will be at least 2, maybe even 3 exclusive tracks on this volume.

This year's compilation is being dedicated to Evan Farrell, one of the most talented and magnificent human beings I have ever had the pleasure of working with. All proceeds from the comp sales will go towards some sort of charity or trust fund in Evan's memory.

Evan, I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with you on so many different occasions, although I must say it never felt like work when you were around. I love you and miss you bro, but i know that your probably jamming with jesus and moses right now, and it's probably pretty fucking tight.

You can listen to Evan's beautiful lap steel playing on Thousand Arrows Iris.

We Just Call It Roulette V.2 is already in the works. Check the website's comp page for updates.

The show is this Saturday, August 18th at the Art Hospital. Each paying guest gets a free CD with admission. Bands performing are:

Racebannon

The Coke Dares

Morrow

w/music spun by DJ LVX

As far as booking goes, all weekends are booked up until late October.

In other recent news, Defiance Ohio was just in recording a new record, Kentucky Nightmare finished tracking their first full length (to be mixed in August) and the new Sump Pumps full length was mixed. Mike Notaro has recently been in the studio quite a bit as well and recently finished up records with Prizzy, Prizzy, Please and Sentinel in addition to some recording with Fort Wayne's All Nite Skate.

In the near future Everthus the Deadbeats will be in mixing their new record, Turn Pale will begin work on a new record, Lafcadio will finish their new record, as will the Old Flames. Defiance Ohio is continuing work on their new stuff, and Tremendous Fucking is coming in to record a new one as well.

The website is constantly being updated with new client pages, session photo galleries and audio samples.

New to the site is the COMPS page, which will have information on the annual We Just Call It Roulette compilation CDs that the studio is putting out. The page is currently void of content but will be updated soon. The first volume will be available August 18th, which is the night of the We Just Call It Roulette release show at Bloomington's Art Hospital. Currently on the bill are Racebannon and The Coke Dares, with one band tba.