Victorious Combinations

Well, we've been working for months now and the album is finally taking shape!  So far we've decided on at least seven songs that will be for the vinyl version.  They are in no particular order: Stand in Front of Tanks It's Still On Hardly Spoken Caught Up to You California'15 Best Tonight Real Life Turns Me On Some of these songs we've written on our own but several have been collaborations with old friends and new.  We can list Ingrid Schroeder, Barry Flynn, Stefan Sigerson, Jordy Birch, Justin "Juice" Kadis, Misty Reid, Leigh Grant, Don Harrison amongst our writing partnerson this album.  It's been really interesting comparing the results of each collaboration, as the songs are all playing together quite nicely. I think we still have a couple really long and hard vocal sessions for the rest of the material we're considering, and there are still so many ideas that we've started in the past that have only reached an ver...

We recently had the pleasure of having old friend and former Pure bandmate Leigh Grant come into the studio and record drums on new Combine the Victorious songs.   It was a near complete Pure reunion that day, as Jordy Birch* was on hand to help with production.  The song in the clip below ( Come Down ) is a track that was co-written with Justin " Juice " Kadis and Misty Reid, we'd started it in 2013 but never completed the recording.  As Isabelle and I listened back to it this spring I could hear where live drums could really add a lot of life to the track. Live drums always seem to have that magic. So we asked Leigh to come down to the studio and put down his magic.  The section of this clip is the very first time Leigh's putting drums to the song, I love how much energy he adds from the very first cymbal crash. Thanks again Leigh, sounds amazing!  As I was messing with the mix a bit I solo'd his performance and found myself thinking of Pureafunalia ,...

We had a great show on Sunday night performing at VALT2013 in the Centre for Digital Media.  The new five piece band, including Leigh Grant (former drummer of 90's alt rock band Pure ), sounded incredible.  I don't think we've sounded better in fact.  Here's just a few photos that have made their way to us from the show.  We had a digital media artist running extra images for us during the gig, which none of us actually saw while we were on stage, but in fact made for quite an interesting looking event! Thanks to Michelle Harding for sharing her photos with us!  

Juice has been editing some nice footage from a recent rehearsal and put this together.  The new five piece band has so much energy, and the sound is nicely rounded out, it's hard to remember when Isabelle and I were doing this as just a duo! Check out the clip, we are playing Glasgow with Leigh Grant (former drummer of Pure) on the drum kit, Juice on guitar, Misty and Isabelle handling the singing and me on keys.  The new band is amazing.  Our show last night at VALT2013 was a tonne of fun, and we reportedly have sounded incredible!  Got to find some footage from the night to share. In the mean time please check out this clip:

This past weekend the four of us started recording new material.  I spent the Friday setting up mics for the drums and recorded me attempting various beats with the hopes of getting a good sound and possibly even creating a few loops.  Of course it's always a challenge to engineer oneself on drums.  Much too much time wasted running back and forth between the kit and the studio, adjusting things after you've recorded, trying it out again and then listening back to see if there's been any improvement.  However, on Saturday Misty Ried came in an laid down the law!  We swapped out my dodgy snare for Juice's vintage Ludwig snare and suddenly everything came to life! Misty it turns out is quite a good drummer!  She has been performing drums on one song live, Brotherhood (the track we were recording bedtracks to on Saturday), but I will admit I never dreamed she had such good groove.  I think we recorded at least three killer loops for new song ideas, all...

Quite excited to be sharing some of our brand new material that we've been working on. This one is the first song written by the new Combine the Victorious lineup. Begun back this past winter from a lucrative improvisation, Hardly Spoken is the first song by Juice, Misty, Isabelle and me all working together. The sound relates to where we were headed with the Crumbling Hearts ep, but there is so much more going on now. The addition of Misty's Rhodes keyboard part, Juice's flowing guitar work, the story of the lyrics from Isabelle, and the not so subtly eastern electro-disco keyboard parts, all add up to something bigger, more complete, dramatic and danceable. Our direction seems to be solidifying: perhaps all the comparisons to Abba weren't misplaced! Have a listen and let us know what you think! We'll be performing this one on Saturday night at the A Change of Frequency music festival, along with debuting another one titled Brotherhood (written s...

Introducing Combine the Victorious 2013.  (or CV3 as I like to call us now) Thanks to the one and only Stefan Sigerson for the photo.- and the printed circuit board!

Thanks to Rob Edmonds for this glimpse of our show this past Friday at Muster Studio.  That is in fact Isabelle singing thru effects to create the voice you're hearing.  We've decided to try out a couple new ideas for the new songs.  You'll note near the end that we'd spliced in a section of the studio version of the song.   The recording is going really well, writing with Juice and Misty has been a total pleasure.  Our music is sounding better than ever and we now have a blinding lineup for our live shows too! Stay tuned, more new music shall be revealed in the coming weeks as well as a few new videos too. M