Victorious Combinations

We are both pleased to present our new video of Glasgow being performed live at the Fox Cabaret.  This is a new arrangement and performance our one of our best songs, and both Isabelle and I are rather excited about how well it's all turned out. Filmed originally when we were opening for Sex With Strangers at their CD release party at the Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, Canada, we'd almost forgot we had this footage until about three weeks ago when I refound the folder I'd put everything into.  I think both of us were surprised at how great it looked and I decided it was worth editing together.  This is our live version, it has a different arrangement with new loops and sounds from the Crumbling Hearts version from 2012.   Because we performed this as a duo, I changed a lot of the tracks and made it entirely electronic, with new loops and way more synths!  I think it works as well as the original, with a somewhat dreamier sound and obviously no guitars. Produc...

Stand in Front of Tanks New instrumental track from the upcoming full length "Autonomous" arriving 2015 Music written and performed by Combine the Victorious Recorded at Boutique Empire Recording, Vancouver, BC, Canada Video features footage from Tianamen Square 1989. Produced by Boutique Empire Edited by Mark R Henning

This is a work in progress but we were both really having fun with it and wanted to share tonight.  An instrumental, first draft, but I think it's working well!  Check it out!

Isabelle and I are feverishly working to complete the recording of our next full length album.  So far we've compiled over thirty five different song ideas, but more keep arriving with each session.  This past week we played out first show as a duo since we got back from Europe in 2012.  It went extremely well, though of course the energy was different from when the band performed as a four or five piece.  The extra room sonically allowed us to really explore the electronic side of our sound, and of course inspired another way to present our material. As it looks right now we'll be including a few re-imagined songs from previous releases amid the new material, all to be put onto vinyl for the final release.  We've been speaking with Boutique Empire artists Robert Edmonds about the art work and we're quite excited to see what he creates for the album. So much to do!  Gotta get back into the studio. Thx for reading Mark

In the excitement of the past couple weeks with our live shows at the Rio Theatre and VALT2013 we almost missed our video Smoke and Choke passing 10 000 views on a music blog site called Totally Fuzzy last week. It's an interesting landmark, ten thousand views, and makes us wonder who is watching our clips, and from where!  You may enjoy all the videos they've collected on the site, click here for check it out . In the mean time, if you haven't seen the Stefan Sigerson directed video yet, please watch it in high definition via  the Boutique Empire Youtube channel.

A couple weeks ago Isabelle and I started writing another new song, titled Overtime .  This one came from a late night jam, where we were just messing around looking for new sounds and ideas.  Isabelle started singing "overtime, on my mind" and we both thought it was a funny thing to sing about.  (Juice has the week before been doing a lot of driving for his work and mentioned how at least he was getting overtime for the hours wasted in traffic etc).  However, when we came back to the idea a few nights later I think we both recognized there was something more to it. Two night ago we were working on it more and Juice came into the studio and offered to track live drums overtop of the programmed beats.  The addition of his playing gave the track a lot more energy, and then he recorded a few passes on guitar to expand the sound even more. We're getting close with a few other ideas simultaneously.  I think September will be a very productive month to finali...

The secretive west coast remix magician Wonderbro has just given us a fantastic new reworking of our track Smoke and Choke.  Taking it in a totally new direction, the track has shed it's soviet disco skin for something quite a bit more fun and dazzling!  Have a listen, share it, download it, pass it around! Big thanks to Wonderbro for this exemplary work!! Enjoy!

This clip is from our Shadowline performance on Thursday night at the Waldorf Hotel. We had some fun reworking an old Siouxsie and the Banshees favorite in honour of the Goth night. We'd like to thanks Rod Grim for shooting video on the night, turns out the mic on the camera is pretty good too! Looking forward to our next show at the B-Ex on December 7th .  Putting together a nice full set for the evening.  Plus it'll be a great night of music with The Population Drops and The Rain on the Sidewalk opening the night.  Come dancing.

Here is a little interview, behind the scenes look at the writing and recording of our new five song EP Crumbling Hearts.  Video shot, edited and directed by Stefan Sigerson.