Russian Recording

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.