Victorious Combinations

 We are really pleased to release our song "What's Going on in Your Head," this week. It has been a long journey to arrive at this release, starting from the Los Angeles living room of friend and producer Stefan Sigerson, to making the song fully twice over. The initial version took on a more full band sound, with live drums and electric guitar and rhodes piano in addition to our usual electronics. However, even after making a final mix and having it mastered we never felt the song connected properly.  So even though we'd spent almost two years attempting to perfect that version I finally decided to scrap it and start over. Taking the drum stem from the original version we imported that into Abelton Live and build an entirely new song. This time instead of quoting so directly from the trip hop influences of Portishead and Massive Attack we took it more minimal and created a new synth driven riff to centre the song to. You can hear it in the intro, the icy slightly dis...

 We are beginning to release the new songs we've been working on this year. The first is a song that had its initial seed planted in Los Angeles back in 2016! What's Going on In Your Head has been around for a few years now but we've never felt we had the definitive version until now. This new track is a complete reworking of our earlier version with ever element rethought, re-sung, re-played and rearranged. I think I can speak for both of us when i say we are finally happy with it! A dark and brooding trip -hop style song in the manner of Portishead, What's Going On In Your Head is a delicate balance of melancholy, melody and menace.  Release date is December 10th 2020.  Video and single release, worldwide though Boutique Empire. 

Isabelle and I have been writing new songs for the past several months and we have studio time booked this coming weekend at the wonderful Hipposonic Studio here in Vancouver. I've asked several drummer friends to help us out with their talents and help record bed tracks for probably five songs (or more depending on how well things work out). Among the new tracks we will be tracking drums in the studio for the song below. We wrote it this summer after a fun night in the jam space, it was kind of a laugh at first but the song kept getting better. Then Isabelle shared with me a CFOX Summer Song Contest that we figured we should apply for (more news on the that later). I know I should wait to see if we are accepted through the first round of judging but I'm rather excited about this track and though we could see who was listening by just sharing it on our blog (which I confess I have been terrible at updating much lately). So, if you have a few minutes please check out our song ca...

We performed 5 of our songs on the Isolation sessions of Onstage Live hosted by local celebrity Fiona Forbes yesterday. It was a real pleasure to play hope you enjoy! Stay safe and healthy, big hugs from Vancouver Mark and Isabelle

Well, Isabelle and I have been self isolating for the past month as most of the world seems to have been, and to keep ourselves feeling good we've maintained our rehearsals and writing sessions. In the course of having a month to ourselves I figured I should attempt to tune up the old Baldwin upright piano that I inherited from dearly missed friend Todd Simko many years ago. As I went about tuning the piano it occurred to me that we should revisit some of our early material again. This song, Embrace , was a favorite of ours from the debut Combine the Victorious album The World Over . The album version, which came out in 2007, is a much bigger production with a full band accompaniment and a rather epic crescendo at the peak of the song. We opted for a simpler and more direct approach with this video, something that could be pulled off with only a single piano and our vocals. Last night we set up a camera, a microphone and a light and tried our hand at this song again. It took us a...

Earlier this week Isabelle and I had an interview with Fiona Forbes (the former host of Shaw's cable show Urban Rush) on her new series " Onstage ." The irony here is of course we are all in isolation due to the Covid 19 virus so the onstage portion has changed significantly. Our appearance is about 8 minutes into the show where we chat with Fiona about what's been going on and how we are coping with the shutdown. After that we have a two song live performance from our basement where we play the songs The Bolsheviks and Glasgow. It was a lot of fun to do and seems to be the way forward for the next month or so for all of us!  Please have a look and let us know what you think. Mark and Isabelle

Just a quick note to state we will be performing as part of a benefit for the West Moberly First Nations on February 21st at the Russian Hall here in Vancouver. This benefit concert is intended to raise money and awareness surrounding the displacement of the first nations by the construction and land clearing of the Site C hydro dam. More info to follow!