Combine the Victorious have released a new single, "What's Going On In Your Head". You can listen on all the popular streaming sites or check out the video below!
We met Jake Bugg via a zoom conference call and discussed his new single as well as several other records and discovered a few of his latest discoveries too! Super nice guy and a really nice interviewee as well! Check it out!
I have the pleasure of shooting camera for this video by Baylii for his song "I'm Gonna MIss Ya."
We filmed around Vancouver on a few days of shooting and then I left it in Adam's hand to put the edit together. It was a fun shoot and the bedroom scene was the first time I've actually attempted anything of that sort, so a learning experience too! Gotta admit the stairs up from Wreck Beach proved to be the exercise I needed for that week! Check it out, it's a good song and Baylii would love your support!
This song was one of the dozne or so songs that Blisterene recorded during the sessions for "So I Have Them" but wasn't chosen to be included in that debut album. Years later, listening to it I can't understand why we decided to leave it off as it sounds good and has a great vibe. I have attached some live footage from a show we performed at the Starfish Room, back in 1997, or 1998. Sadly we didn't play this song that night so I've only kinda faked this footage into approximate shape. I think the song shines through none the less. Please have a look!
This is a televised fashion show by Isabelle Dunlop on the Urban Rush program with hosts Fiona Forbes and Michael Eckford. Originally broadcast on December 7th in 2005, it features an interview with the designer along with several holiday season dresses on display.
For more of what Isabelle Dunlop is up to please check out her instagram account @isabelledunlopclothing or click through to have a look at her blog: isabelledunlop.com
This one is a personal favorite of all the interviews we've done in 2020 so far. Jehnny Beth is the lead singer of the band Savages as well as a host on Apple Beats 1 radio. Jehny joined us from her apartment in Paris to discuss the creation of her brand new solo album "To Love Is To Live" as well offer up a few of her favorites growing up!
We had the opportunity to meet with Jason Williamson of the UK duo Sleaford Mods last week via Zoom. Jason gave us some great stories as well as the reasoning behind their latest release "All That Glue"and several hilarious anecdotes from their history. Very fun person from an interesting and cool band.
Combine the Victorious appeared on Fiona Forbes' show Onstage this week. They duo had a great conversation with Fiona from the Isabelle Dunlop Clothing store to talk about the shutdown, setting private appointments, and of course music. After the interview Combine performed five songs that were previously recorded in the basement of their house. Included here for the first time is their song "What's Going On In Your Head" as well as favorites "Smoke and Choke" and an acoustic piano version of "Embrace."
Isabelle and I have been self isolating for the past month just like everyone else. One thing that has been a true benefit to this extra time is going back over some of our older songs and figuring out how to play them again. This song, Embrace, was originally written and recorded for the debut Combine the Victorious album The World Over back in 2007. While the album version is rather epic with a long crescendo build from the beginning to the end, this piano version is much simpler, with only an upright piano for accompaniment. We recorded this last night as part of our Friday night music rehearsals. Have a look, we are both rather pleased with it!
As the quarantine continues in Vancouver we have been recording more interviews via teleconferencing. This week we caught up with Chris and Neil from the band Peach Pit. Peach Pit has just released their new album and were all set to tour for the rest of the year in support of it when the Covid19 outbreak occurred. So instead of catching up with them when they were set to play a sold out show at the Commodore we chatting about their new album, working with John Congleton as a producer, and all sorts of other music in out interview. Great guys, such a pleasure to hang with and talk music!
Blisterene had a busy year in 1997. We'd recorded our debut album, a ten song collection titled "So I Have Them" and already made one video. Broadcast Nationwide was a follow up to Gratitude and directed by Shawn Carnegie. We made this one on 16mm film and shot some of the footage in my brother's former business office on Marine Drive in Vancouver,
This was a fun video to shoot, thanks to Shawn and Tod Van Dyk who master minded the affair. This was a great underground video with many hours in an elevator and then even more running around the stairwells of the Pacific Centre mall. I have fond memories of this one, probably the easiest set I've ever been on. We all had fun, though worked a couple long days to create this!
The yellow walled rehearsal footage was shot at Les's place, (aka Malcolm Tente) where we actually recorded our album. Interesting times back then.
Band: Blisterene
Song: Broadcast Nationwide
Album: So I Have Them
Released: 1997
Blisterene was a power pop band from Vancouver, Canada. I formed this band after I departed from Pure and thought to make an exciting three piece. We played every venue in Vancouver and then managed a full Canadian and a follow up Western Canadian tour before we put the band on ice.
This video was filmed and edited by none other than Blair Dobson, Blair had made two videos for Pure so it just seemed natural to approach him to make one for my new band. This video was played a couple times on Much Music and helped secure us a spot at CMW as well as our cross country tour.
Band: Blisterene
Song: Gratitude
Album: So I Have Them
released: 1997
This weekend I cut together a video for the band Zombie Roof. Earlier this year we made a full length album at the wonderful Hipposonic Studio here in Vancouver. Hipposonic is essentially the reincarnation of Little Mountain Sound Studios, in the former studio B. A fantastic spot with incredible rock and roll history (Bruce Fairburn and Bob Rock made several platinum selling albums in the studio) we recorded and mixed 10 songs in a week (yes I like to work quickly).
Just ahead a couple months and we are all in isolation and life has all but stopped for most of us. The band members have been proactive though and set about releasing video singles to share their music. Singer Trent sent me some footage that had a very cool "comic book" filter set on it, turning it to an almost rotoscoped looking black and white image. He also cut in some old archival footage in between his lip sync and I thought he had something cool. I requested everybody in the band do a similar thing and then transfer me their footage. I'd then cut together a lyric video from their stuff.
So on Saturday I received four different performances, all made in various spots around the province, all separately but of course all playing to the same song. I placed them on a timeline and within a couple minutes I knew instantly that it should look good. An evening of editing and tweaking and voila, a new video for Zombie Roof: Automatic.
So, along with most of the world, have been in a shutdown to slow the spread of the corona virus. Due to the shutdown, all tours have been cancelled and nobody is coming to Vancouver for shows so we have begun conducting interviews via video conferencing. This is our first interview with Welsh singer songwriter Chloe Davis known as twst. Chloe joined us from her parents house where she is in isolation to talk about her new EP, twst0001, and the music that shaped her along the way.
Back in 1993 Pure was invited to perform live on Much Music as part of the Canadian Music Video Awards (following picking up an award for best Alternative Video). This was in the autumn and following a summer writing session for the second album. In this clip the band is performing a brand new song Anna Is A Speed Freak, one of the first of the new batch of songs that would become Generation 6 Pack.
Way back in 1993 Pure won the best Alternative Video award at the Canadian Music Video Awards held at the famous Much Music studios on Queen St, Toronto. We attended a couple of these and both times I recall being a huge party and a great time. The old Much Music was so important to the Canadian music scene, establishing bands like ours right across the nation. It's fun to watch this again, with VJ Erica Ehm talking with us and the Bare Naked Ladies announcing our award.
This was the last video we made from our debut album Pureafunalia. This song has a long and interesting history too. The song Pure was written when we were still calling ourselves The Grin Factory. Though that name was short lived this song wasn't. We made a demo with John Webster (the producer of Jordy, Todd and Leigh's former band After All). John had been working on sessions with the likes of Motely Crew and Bon Jovi and had built up a respectable array of sampled drum sounds over that time. When we brought him this song he has a Tascam 488 (8 track cassette multitrack) that we striped one track with sync to drive his Mac running MOTU Perfomer. John loaded up his Akai S1000 sampler with some incredible drum sounds that he told us had been made either for a Motley Crew album or maybe it was Aerosmith, they had been made at Little Mountain Studio for a record that Bob Rock had produced (John was usually brought in to play keyboards and generally make things sound even huger than normal).
Leigh Grant, the drummer in Pure, played his parts on a keyboard, triggering these fantastic drum samples and then Jordy put down the bass part. (I don't remember if David Hadley was in the band at this point). Todd laid down one rhythm guitar part and I sequenced all the strings and the clarinet sample along with the little percussion sequence that I'd done in my Ensoniq ESP-16. I vividly remember the moment when John flipped the tape and told Todd to play a solo, but in reverse. The result was mesmerizing. Jordy's vocals went down pretty quickly and we had a killer demo.
Pure, the song, was then played at a Music West listening panel (in fact the festival was called Westex that year) wherein Ron Goudy from Restless Records stood up at the end of the playback and announced to the room that "this band will be signed in 24 hours." We weren't, but it did lead to us meeting a music lawyer and later signing to Reprise Records.
Months later we found ourselves living on houseboats in Sausalito, California and recording our album Pureafunalia with former Talking Head's guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison producing. We tracked an entirely different version of the song with live drums and Dave on bass but something didn't feel right. Turned out we'd recorded it a bit faster than the demo and we had lost some of its groove. That lead to us getting John Webster to transfer the music to a 2" 24 track up in Vancouver and sending it down to us in California. The real irony came later when we built the song up to so many tracks we had to transfer everything over to a Sony PCM 3348 digital multitrack. We managed to go from the day's cheapest recording medium to the most expensive in the course of recording one song! Pureafunalia came out, we made a handful of videos, toured several times and then figured we could get one more single off the album and made a video for the song Pure. It was filmed in a rehearsal room that was decorated with the items you see in the video. Co-directed by Rob Chong and Jordy Birch, with camera and editing done by Rob. It's a great song and typically Pure looking clip (all our videos seemed to look alike) that I'm happy to share with the world 28 years later.
Spiritual Pollution was the third single from Pure's debut album Pureafunalia. This video was co-directed by Blair Dobson and Jordy Birch, with Dobson handling the camera and editing as well. Made in a loft in Vancouver with not much more than a concept, a couple horns and a smoke machine Spiritual Pollution was one of the more successful videos from the band.
This clip included a short interview with Much Music VJ Steve Anthony talking with Jordy Birch and Mark Henning before debuting the clip. I believe this was sometime in late 1992.
This is the first time the band Pure appeared live on Much Music. Terry David Mulligan introduced us and afterward conducted a short interview. We played our song "Blissful Kiss" which was a less successful single from Pureafunalia. In the interview we discussed being of the "Big, Bad, and Groovy"cross Canada tour supporting Bootsauce, Sons of Freedom and Art Bergman. I believe this was filmed in Sept 1992.
Here is the first version of the video for Blast, the first single from Pure's debut album Puerafunalia. Shot and directed by Dermot Shane in a warehouse in Burnaby, B,C., Canada back in early 1992. Blast came out in near the end of the summer in 1992. This video was later replaced by a second, higher production level version directed by Troy Smith (which won Best Alternative Video at the CMVA's in 1993).
Once again, this clip was transferred from vhs tape that had been taped from Much Music television. I've replaced the broadcast audio with CD audio to increase the sound quality for YouTube.
This is a clip recorded from Much Music back in 1992. Interviewer Terry David Mulligan caught up with singer Jordy Birch on the beach at English Bay in the Wesy End of Vancouver to discuss the upcoming debut release Pureafunalia. It's fun to see Vancouver back in 1992.
This clip came to me courtesy of a friend, Sean McFarland. Way back in the Autumn of 1985, my second year of University, The Silent North had written a handful of songs that we were considering releasing for an EP. This song wasn't included on the EP but was finished just about that same time. Sean suggested we try filming something and came by our rehearsal space with his 8mm camera. We shot this footage and it was lost to us for decades. After a move recovered the canister Sean gave me the film canister again about 10 years ago. A few years went by until by chance Stefan Sigerson mentioned he had a projector at his place and could digitize the film for us. I had this footage for several years and it wasn't until this Covid-19 breakout that I had time or inclination to try setting it to music.
With no sound on 8mm film there was only the image to go from. I attempted lip reading to determine which song might be being performed but I couldn't really tell. A conversation with Daniel Clement suggested that we were playing our song Blue Water. The tempos are about the same but the singing parts didn't completely line up (though I suspect we were just playing it live and not attempting to lip sync - we honestly didn't know any better). Therefore I took a bit of liberty and cut the footage to follow the song a bit better.
Musically this was another cassette 4 track demo. We did a lot of writing and recording those days, all of it on Dan's Tascam 244. To my ear it sounds as though we were using a Roland TR-707 drum machine on this song. The mixdown went to another cassette tape and we made copies from that. The music on this video is a digital transfer I made back in the early 90's from cassette to a Panasonic SV-3700 DAT machine. I guess I was always concerned about backing things up and I recorded a lot of that old material to DAT tape. Yesterday I did a bit of processing on the music and lined it up in Davinci Resolve to the video. And now, after 35 years we finally have a little music video for our song Blue Water!
Title: Blue Water
Artist: The Silent North
Lyrics: Callan Wilson
Music: The Silent North (Clement, Henning Wilson)
Vocals: Callan Wilson
Bass, guitar: Daniel Clement
Keyboards, drum machine: Mark Henning
Camera Operator: Sean McFarland
Editor, post audio: Mark Henning
Film to digital transfer: Stefan Sigerson
White Rock, BC, 1987.
This video is a simple home video from my high school/university era band The Silent North (also known as Idle Minx). While we never really got the band off the ground we did manage to write several songs over our short lived history. The song here, "Even You" was one of the last tracks we wrote and recorded. As I remember it we were using guitarist Dan Clement's Tascam 244 cassette 4 track along with a Roland MC500 midi sequencer synced to tape. I'm pretty sure this was mostly me doing the programming and keyboard playing as it's so busy with parts! Our singer Callan Wilson sadly died in a car crash only a few weeks after we made this clip so it became our final output together.
We set up in our rehearsal space built in Dan's garage and messed around with a fairly basic VHS tape camera and a couple house lamps. The grainy moments seemed to come from us trying to layer new elements over top of the first bits in the camera. If memory serves the camera was operated by our friend James Ginther (who may have owned it as well).
Music: Mark Henning Lyrics: Callan Wilson
Vocals: Callan Wilson
Bass, trumpet: Dan Clement
Keyboards, sequencing, drum machine: Mark Henning
Equipment used:
Tascam 244
Roland MC-500 with PPS sync
Korg Poly 6
Korg Poly 800
Yamaha DX-7
Yamaha RX-7
video camera: unknown
We had a great conversation with Dennis and David from the hardcore band Refused last week, before the entire shutdown of live music due to the Covid 19 virus. Check it out, great guys and lots to say!
If you enjoyed this there is a 24 minute unabridged version available on our patreon site: patreon.com/RIMLTV
So after a three month break we return with our first interview of 2020. We caught up with the band Metronomy when they performed at the Commodore last month. All five members joined us to talk about their latest release, "Metronomy Forever" as well as the music that has inspired them all through the years. Fun people with a lot of jokes and good band rapport, this was a great start to our fifth year of filming RIML.
I found this interview on a seldom used old hard drive, one that contained a bunch of old footage, transferred from VHS. This is a CBC production called "Ear To The Ground" featuring my former band PURE. The interview portion was recorded in Vancouver at a now defunct poolhall (called The Automotive if memory serves) while the live footage was filmed in Toronto during a show at Lee's Palace. Following the release of Pure's debut album "Pureafunalia" this Ear to The Ground was one of several nation television moments for the band. Please enjoy this blast from the early 90's, when Much Music was still important and people loved to see bands perform live!
