Victorious Combinations

6 May 2007 The Hours part two Howdie - just got back in from mixing a band's record, they're great guys and probably have a couple hits. It's cool to be working back in the studio again: SSL's really do sound pretty damn good! Alright, for those of you who may care (I reckon there's probably about five of you) I'll finish my story about the making of The Hours. Rather pompous isn't it? After Jesse finished tracking the drums that afternoon, which he did in record time -totally prepared, totally excited, and completely positive about the whole thing, you just gotta love the guy -Isabelle and I spent a couple hours recording the piano parts to All of the Love, Twist of Fate, and King's Cross. Then we waited around until some of our friends showed up to sing backing vocals. (Kudos to Barb and Erin for being the premier guests of honour). Once there was eleven of us we recorded the choir parts to All Together and For the...

2 May 2007 The Hours part one I was inspired by a blog I wrote on the Pure site the other day. In that one I'd written the story behind our song Anna is a Speed Freak. It was a bit long winded but I've always felt it to be one of the most interesting recordings I'd ever made. The process of how we came up with The Hours isn't exactly as convoluted, but it still seemed a bit interesting so I thought I'd write about that song this week. Born originally on Christmas Eve 2005 and titled very clevery "Good at the End", The Hours was a very long jam, something around 8:30 minutes. It started weakly, went on forever and got kind of intersting at the 5 minute mark. We were using the "write way too much, for too long" formula to get our songs off the ground at that point. I confess that I still use this approach today, I figure it's better to play a song for obviously too long and hope to get a new idea somewhere la...