Victorious Combinations

Our new track - It's Still On - has a long history.  We initially wrote and recorded a version for our second release, the Disagreements EP.   It was an ok recording but really in retrospect I always heard it as a demo rather than a finished record.  We'd shared the writing with our pals Barry Flynn and Ingrid Schroeder and it was an exciting moment.  However, the years rolled by and the song started to feel forgotten. We were considering tunes to play for Isabelle's parents Golden Anniversary, and, because there was going to be a piano at the party, I recalled our old song Please .  It was written around a completely free form piano part, with wildly varying tempos and time signatures, very romantic.  Isabelle and I began rehearsing for Scotland and after the first time we tried it just with piano for accompaniment we both felt the excitement again. While over in Scotland, we had the pleasure of driving up through the Highlands and had a brilliant vis...

We are very pleased to share our song It's Still On .   Our good friend Paul Schroeder (Stone Roses, Campag Velocet) has gifted us with this new mix.  Let us know what you think, leave a message here or follow us on Facebook  / Twitter . It's Still On - produced and performed by Combine the Victorious Written by Mark R Henning, Isabelle Dunlop, Ingrid Schroeder and Barry Flynn Mixed by Paul Schroeder Mastered at The Valt Studio by Jordy Birch and MRH Vocals: Isabelle Dunlop, Mark R Henning Backing Vocals: Ingid Schroeder, Barry Flynn Drums: Kevin Jones all other instruments: MRH

24 Nov 2008 "Disagreements: tomorrow (hopefully) Happy Monday to you! Well if all is going according to plan, we should have our second release up on iTunes tomorrow, November 25th 08 .  The Disagreements ep took quite a bit of work, and seemed as though it might never be finished: but we did put a stamp on the package and sent it in to our distributor last month in the hopes of it actually being processed in time for our release date.  We decided to release the ep entirely online, no cd's, just downloads.  So far we've sold almost five times as many copies of The World Over from iTunes than on cd (I'll admit that this might possibly be due to not utilizing a physical distribution system other than our myspace and .com page - but I've had nothing but grief from such services in the past) so it makes sense to us.  Additionally neither Isabelle nor I have actually purchased a cd in more than 15 months - we're truly converted to the con...

7 Nov 2008 New Song: Please Current mood: inspired After many months of writing, recording, erasing, re-recording, re-arranging, waiting for objectivity to return, abandoning, peaking at it and sharing it with friends overseas we've finally posted our best song to date: Please.  Well best song is rather subjective so I'll let you decide which is best, but it's certainly the best one in my opinion. Please was written in it's first draft back in January this year.  We posted it for a while in that version but it started to grate on me a bit so we took it down thinking it just needed a better recording to make it work.  I had Kevin over to track the drums at a slightly faster tempo than the demo, and then I figured it would just be a case of overdubbing the parts onto the bedtracks and we'd have our song.  However it was anything but that simple.  Rather like our song Decay , Please took months of reworking to get it into the arrangemen...

25 Jun 2008 NEW SONG "Decay" Current mood: working Hey! Well after weeks of messing around, (over a year really) we've finally got our song Decay (formerly known as Bohemian Athenian ) up on our page. The story on this song is outrageously long, and for a little four minute song it seems quite strange that it took so much effort to complete. Back in March 2007 we'd recorded the original demo for a song then titled Bohemian Athenian. It had that title because in a dubiously inspired moment I'd started the song off with a little whispery chant of "I am a bohemian Athenian." I guess that lyric was born from our desire to one day have a little place in Greece to live in: somewhere warm, quaint and lovely, where we could hang out, walk to the village, have our friends over from North America or where ever and just relax and have fun. Of course the only little hitch to those words was the rest of the song had absolutely nothing t...

10 Jun 2008 Todd Simko to play with Combine the Victorious It's with great delight that I can announce that Mr. Todd Simko (former guitarist from Pure ) has agreed to perform with us on our July 18th show at the Biltmore Cabaret . He has also done us the honour of playing on our latest track Decay . Those guitars are all from the master himself! In addition to Todd we also shall have the pleasure of Kevin Jones (The February March) joining us on the drums as well. It shall be a more stripped down show, we're looking at restructuring some of the older songs to be playable with just bass, guitar and drums. Isabelle and I want to try out a more intimate club style on this gig. Other big news is that our label, Boutique Empire , is off the ground and proudly presenting this upcoming showcase. The roster includes Combine the Victorious , Guilty About Girls (Jordy Birch's new group) and of course, Sex With Strangers . SWS will be unveiling the new ...

14 Feb 2008 CtV band update. It's funny that even though Combine the Victorious has only been performing live for less than a year now we've gone through several band member changes. Our first gig, performed in our basement, had Todd Simko ( Pure 's guitarist) playing guitar with us. Then, after our debut show at Richard's on Richards, Jesse Smith moved away to Toronto to play with his brother in Birds of Wales . In stepped Kevin Jones , ( The February March 's drummer) as Jesse's replacement. He's still with us along with his brother Nick Jones on keyboards: in fact Nick is the only other member of CtV that's been with us from the first rehearsal. Our second guitarist, Marc Wild , gave us three excellent shows, two of which were at Richard's, but after a very hectic 2007, Marc wanted to focus on his own music this year and opted out of doing more live performances. Considering how busy the guy is, it's wasn't...