The addition of the iso booth to the studio adds a lot of functionality.  Not only is the booth a great acoustic environment to record vocals,  it also will serve as another room to separate live performers and isolate guitar amps….all good things.

Woohoo!

-Chris

Alright! Now that we got that out of the way we can get on to the good stuff. The Jumping Fountains full-length is coming along nicely. All of the primary instruments (drums, bass, guitar and synth) have been tracked and await the nimble fingers and finely tuned ears of our sound engineer (and fearless leader), Chris Bigley. JF should be hitting the vocal booth, as time allows for it, over the next few weeks and beyond that, and a few other small instrumental parts, the CD should be finished. We are all starting to get very excited about the way the songs are coming together and are absolutely giddy with the thought that we will be able to share them with you in the not so distant future.

Until that day arrives, however, we will be sure to maintain a higher rate of "postage" on the VREX main page. Many thanks to all of you that have been checking back for updates, we will do our best to keep you fully supplied with the stuff you crave. For the time being, enjoy these shots of JF bassist, lovingly known as, "da beej".

Pendulum clock rock,

Jake

The better part of the day was spent tuning up the drums and developing tempos for scratch tracks, after which we were finally ready to hit record on some drum tracks. I don't know if it was the KFC bowl he ate for lunch or the hours of listening to a monotonous tone generator while we worked on the drums, but once it came time to lay down his tracks, Zach was a one-take machine. He powered through five of the eight songs in about two hours, making up for a lot of the day's lost time. In the end we came out with some rockin' drums tracks and a great start on the album.

Stay tuned for daily updates throughout the process of recording the album. Next up, more drums and then on to bass and guitars.....

Chris

Today marks the first day of tracking for Jumping Fountains at VREX Studios. Jumping Fountains is made up of four Walla Walla natives with a love of rock and an even stronger love of not taking themselves too seriously. JF will be recording a full-length over the next couple of weeks with the help of Vicarious Rex Studios and the expertise of our very own Chris Bigley. JF is planning to produce a limited number of CDs and the album (currently being called, "Jump This") will also be released for download through the Vicarious Rex website. More posts/photos documenting Jumping Fountains studio time will be put up as they become available so don't be afraid to check back regularly. Also be sure to check out JF's "Rock 'n' Roll Coyote" to get a taste of what the band is all about.

It's been a big year for VRex.  In March we moved into our studio and kicked off a new era in the evolution of the recording studio/label.  The new space was a much needed upgrade and solidified our presence in Walla Walla...  and what's a new space without some new gear to start tweaking?  With that in mind we made a significant investment in the quality of our services by upgrading our board, mics, instruments and computer equipment.  Lastly, thanks to the substantial effort and genius of our very own Jake Carlson, we finally started a complete overhaul and redesign of the website.  Though we didn't meet all of our goals for the year (most notably putting on an all-ages rock concert in Walla Walla...still in the works, stay tuned), we still did pretty well, and 2010 is setting up to be another huge year for us.

So what do we have planned for 2010?  Well for one, we plan to unleash the studio on the world....or at least the Walla Walla Valley.  We've been spending so much time getting the new studio up to speed this year that actually recording music took a backseat for awhile.  Now all of the hard work is paying off and the projects are rolling in, not to mention we are doubling our efforts to get the word out to as many people as possible.

The rock concert is building some steam, but we are still having difficulty finding a good venue (if you have any suggestions definitely send them our way).  Once we get that little issue out of the way we should be in the clear to make this thing happen.

As for projects, Joe Keown is done tracking his solo project and you should see some of his music popping up on the site in the near future.  Jumping Fountains will be recording their album (finally) the week between Christmas and New Years, and we've recently started recording some tracks for a very talented Whitman artist named Adriel.

T-Shirts! T-Shirts! and more T-Shirts!  That's right, we are also gearing for our second line of T-Shirts.  Jake has come up with some killer new designs so get your preferred color choices ready.  More news about this in the spring.

As for the website, keep checking back for updates as we build this thing from the ground up.  We've got some really cool features we are working on that will take this thing to the next level.

My hot chocolate is getting cold so I better wrap this thing up.  Thanks for sticking to the end of this post, it was a long one.  Also a big thanks to everyone who helped us out this year.  We couldn't do what we do without you.  Have a safe and happy holiday season!

As always, Rock and Roar!