OGRE IN THE BASEMENT

It’s amazing how acquiring a TEAC Tascam 144, not to mention lining the walls with two-by-fours, can transform a simple Vancouver basement into a recording studio. Such was the case with Ogre Studios, which came into being in 1995.

Those first sounds captured on the Tascam (once owned by Jim Vallance, Bryan Adams’ songwriting partner) caught the ear of local producer Glen Reely (Mystery Machine, Kinnie Starr and 54~40), who recorded West Coast Music Award-nominee Daytona at Ogre Studios, yielding the album Sustain. Other highlights from this period include country superstar Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Sinus Envy, Jim Banning and countless Vancouver high school bands.

OGRE IN THE CHURCH

In 1944 a small farmhouse built in Mission, BC in the 1920s was lifted from its foundations, shipped down the Fraser River, then trucked up Main Street, Vancouver. It came to rest in the mid-Main neighbourhood, where it was used as a Protestant church. The building was abandoned in the early 1970s until 1997, when Ogre Studios moved in and turned the old church into a recording studio.

With a control room in an adjacent apartment building patched into the church through cables running across an alley, Ogre Studios had a new home. It was here, within in the walls of this spacious but cozy building that Ogre developed its warm and relaxed atmosphere for which it’s known and loved. At this time, the studio also made significant technological advances, acquiring state-of-the-art automated mixing, editing and mastering capabilities.

The first artists to use the new gear were Green Room and Mimosa. Other highlights from this period included: Bocephus King’s The Blue Sickness, Solarbaby's Another Bloody Sidewalks Dream, Derek Fairbridge’s Slow Down, the legendary, two as-yet-unreleased records by Kristos Sultan and Spygirl’s self-titled album, mixed by Beck cohorts, Tom Rothrock and Doug Boehm. Mobile recording highlights include Juno Award-winner Metalwood's Live, Juno Award-winner Oliver Gannon, NYC tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, EBS (featuring Chris Gestrin, Brad Turner, Andre Lachance and Randal Stoll), Ross Taggert, Hard Rubber Orchestra, Talking Pictures, Soulstream, Laura Crema, Mother of Pearl, Namedropper and Smokin’ Section.

OGRE BY THE CREEK

The year 2000 brought bad news to Ogre Studios. Word got out that “The Church” was marked for demolition. Despite a heroic battle to save it, including a dramatic man-to-bulldozer standoff, The Church was torn down.

All was not lost, though. Blessed with the survival skills of a cockroach, Ogre Studios persevered and found a new home in “studio row” along Vancouver’s False Creek.
After several months of construction, the studio was up and running in April 2001. Recording highlights from this period have so far included: Kia Kadiri, Jesse Zubot, Tim Fuller, Kinnie Starr, Tamara Nile, the Grames Brothers, Lily Frost, Uzumi Taiko, Dub Freque, Coco Love Alcorn, Assertion, Smoke Rings, Damn the Diva and soundtrack work for CBC TV’s DaVinci's Inquest.

In this, its current location, Ogre Studios (now featuring a live room with 25-foot ceilings, a control room, three isolation rooms, an editing room and a preproduction room) retains the warm and relaxed atmosphere of The Church with the added conveniences of a modern recording facility that was designed and constructed from the ground up.