Sorry sorry sorry. It flooded. Not here like but any excuse’ll do… Just as you get used to the Crimea actually keeping the same line-up for longer than a year, Andy ups and leaves. Well good luck to you Mr, but who’s gonna join up next? Well watch this space, as I have a strangely psychic knack of predicting new Crimea members. Now, who else thinks that one from The Go Team! would fit well?

Ok, news. The Beijing Beat blog on Claus.com has a long story on the band’s first trip to China. Apparently they’re going back for more in September when they play the Pop Festival.

Free album stories haven’t gone away; the News & Star site features an update on the release with comments from Andy Stafford. Prospect Magazine have a quick mention in a wider free music article, the Independent have an even quicker name drop and the Guardian give em two lines. Though none of them are as pesimistic as Sweeping The Nation’s take on events though.

I think this stuff from La Burroteca is written in Spanish. Theres a donkey. And a pic of LWOA. I know no more…

Gig reviews now, and Dr Alex Hale III (yeah, sure…) was so impressed with the band’s Modest Mouse support that he popped along to see em headline at Birmingham’s Bar Academy too.

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‘Secrets of the Witching Hour’ CD Launch
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So, today’s the day the album gets a full proper record store ‘n everything release. While forum member and Virgin employee phreaxboy spends the morning scouring the latest deliveries for any sign of Secrets Of The Witching Hour, here’s where you can get the thing much quicker and easier online:

Long time Crimea supporters (they were the only place you could buy the first album release outside of Crimea gigs) Townsend Records have the album up for £9.99 (+ £1.50 shipping). Pick up some older releases while you’re there too.

The official Crimea store at Corporation Records still has it in for £10.00 inc p&p along with a few t-shirts left. If you can’t get to a gig to buy stuff, check em out.

Chepeast but not necessarily fairest are HMV. If you support their attacks on free music (way to go, Prince) then get it from their online store for £6.99 inc p&p. I say leave em to their 75% drop in profits, they’re clearly happy enough with it.

Not known to say particually nice things about the band (though that “crock of shite” line is possibly one of the most poetic I’ve read), Norman Records seem a little more relaxed with the new album. £8.59 + £1.00 p&p gets you more lines like “unspectacular yet foot tappingly catchy” (re. WRG).

Best of the rest: Chartacular Amazon have it for £8.99 + £too.much p&p, teletastic Play.com will ship it free once you hand over £9.99, and the world’s best supermarket Asda will do the same thing for only £7.97 and a months wait.

Browsing the contents of WHSmith last week I missed the very small review of Secrets Of The Witching Hour in Rock Sound (issue 8, June 07), tucked away in the corner of page 90. Good job those on the forum have better eyes as RS give the album the best rating I’ve seen in a mag so far; 8 / 10 describing the band as “eccentric, charming, poetic and imaginative”.

Biggest print article so far goes to Notion mag. I picked up the last copy of issue 28 / July 07 in York’s Smiths and it doesn’t dissapoint, no rating but a good writeup saying Davey & Co “have a consistency of intent that could defeat other equally ambitious outfits”. Thanks, once again, to Lee at Velocity PR for spotting that one.

Not sure where it comes from (looks like the Metro), but this Brighton Barfly gig review was clearly written by a very old skool fan of the group, still using Owen’s old band-name. Not surprising since it was posted and quite likely written by a member of one of Davey’s favourite bands The Fish Brothers.

Update: All recent mag articles now available to view in this Webshots album.

The Crimea’s super-sized bass player Joe Udwin has sat down for a chat with Subba-Cultcha and told them all about his place in the band, the new album and his love for, among other things, Crimea b-side Sideways. I swear if another person mentions that track I’m gonna rip my head off, it’s been stuck in there for weeks and i hate it hate haaatteee iiittttt. Hospital rocks though.

There’s more Crimea love from High Voltage, this time they rate the album with four lightning bolts out of five. Which is three more than nearly hit my house last night, which really would have been one of “summer’s most jubilant and most poignant moments”. Alas, only the album gets that sort of praise.

If by chance a fan of these lot were hit by lightning, I may be seen to dance around exclaiming Burn Baby Burn. In commemoration, of course, as Ash’s songwriting skills now seem to be destined soley for hit singles such as the aforementioned 2001 hit after giving up the album game for good. Noting the similarity with management mates The Crimea, Music Towers gives the free album a very short mention.

If you missed it, here’s the online version of the NME’s album review. Now if only I could burn a few of those baby’s I have stocked in my closet

Today’s gig review comes from the Sunday Mail who gave the King Tuts show 3 / 5 in last weekend’s edition, while Timeout London look forward to Monday’s Borderline show while giving it a recommended rating.

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The Crimea’s Secrets Of The Witching Hour makes its way in to three magazines for a review this week, so head down your local WH Smith and check these lot out:

The June 2007, issue 8 of Play Music mag features the longest and best album review on page 122. The 4 / 5 rating does seem to take the opinion that this may be the band’s last goodbye though.

I daren’t mention the name of the next mag. Yet strangely it rhymes with “the Enemy“. How fitting. Anyway, their 23rd June issue, while also suprisingly passing on another chance to feature Pete Doherty or the Artic Monkeys on the cover for a Glasto 2007 title instead, have another surprise instore on page 36 with a not-one-bad-thing-to-say 6 / 10 score for the album. I guess they’ve eaten more than mud this week.

Not quite so expensive is the June 2007 issue of The Fly magazine, free from all good music venues and stores and still featuring our very own Owen Hopkin as a regular contributor. That pulls them no favours for the review though, a 3.5 / 5 on page 49 yet they’re still full of nothing but praise for the release. And if you can’t find a copy, just pop over to their website to have a read of the magazine online, for free. It’s the new way, people. Free forever.

Here’s some gig reviews for you today, but before I start may I point you in the direction of Last.fm’s new Events pages, specifically the Crimea one. I’ll likely be using it to provide listings on this site in a short time, so I’m making sure it’s up to date with all the latest gig info, and you can add reviews and photos of gigs to each listing.

Anyway, on with the reviews. The band support Modest Mouse last month and here’s what The Music Magazine had to say about their performance in Nottingham’s Rock City.

Moving in to Wales, the band’s headlining slot at Wrexham’s Central Station is given the once over by Caught In The Crossfire, along with their thoughts on support band Undercut.

Controlled chaos is what BBC Nottingham called the band’s show at The Social, while High Voltage were more disappointed by the heat at Joshua Brooks than anything else.

No post here would be complete lately without the usual SOTWH news articles, and the Scotsman doesn’t dissapoint, while also plugging the band’s Cabaret Voltaire gig, taking place right now I do believe. They should be well in to Talking Nonsense by now. Speaking of which, here’s some Japanese nonsense from Sailor Music Record Box, also about - you guessed it - the album release.

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Ffffiiiinally, the album you’ve all been waiting for has arived. Nine boxes of freshly pressed CDs arrived at Crimea HQ yesterday and should have already been shipped off to all those who pre-ordered the album. Sorry for the longer than expected wait, hit more to see what Owen had to say about it.

And if you hadn’t already, you can now purchase The Crimea’s second album Secrets Of The Witching Hour on CD from the band’s official online store for the princely sum of £10.00. No doubt it’ll be available at future gigs too, and as always you can download the digital version free of charge from the band’s official website or at 7Digital’s Indiestore website.

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There’s a very educated review of The Crimea’s gig at Birmingham Bar Academy up on the Fat Amp Music site, with the reviewer leaving quite impressed with the band.

The Sheffield version of This City has a preview of the Leadmill gig still up. It may be a little late with the gig having taken place four days ago, but this one isn’t: Evening News 24’s preview of the Norwich Arts Centre gig on the 14th is still valid and contains a little info on the support bands too.

Album stuff now, and Mark Stanley’s blog contains a recomendation and pointer towards the free album, while foreign blog (still not entirely sure where though) Muzak! contains a review of the whole thing. Unless they number things as differently as they write them, that 29% probably ain’t great.

Judge for yourself though, as the Indiestore wordpress blog points you towards the 7Digital Idiestore online shop, official Crimea online retailer, where you can download the whole album from instead of the official homepage. Strangely enough they also charge £1.50 for downloading the album as a whole. Possibly most interesting though is the last paragraph on the blog which mentions some very interesting stuff. Just don’t trust it any more than those Bombay Sapphire Coma rumours.

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Two album reviews today with both Manchester Evening News and This Is Fake DIY giving it 3 out of 5, the former prefering the the previous album and the later liking the subtletie of the lyrics.

A little more impressed us Unkle Rupert who recommends the album in his blog.

Portuguese blog Remixtures also mentions the album and quite a lot more, though I’ll have to have some babelfish fun before knowing exactly what’s there…

Finishing with some gig based stuff, Room Thirteen review the band’s show at the Fez in Reading, giving it an eventual rating of 11 out of 13.

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There’s a few new album reviews turned up on the web, and they’re not too shabby either. Stylus Magazine give the album a B rating, saying “Macmanus’s unappeased ache is the splintered reflection of the love-fearing adolescent in all of us”. Subba Cultcha also like the album, comparing The Crimea to Grandaddy, Brighteyes and Mercury Rev. And Manchester Music give a shorter review ending in a 4 out of 5 rating.

Pointing you in the right direction is the Morning Paper site with, dare I say it, hopefully one of the last album release stories I’ll have to write about here.

So, on to the gigs, and the BBC Berkshire site has a preview up of a gig last month. A bit late, but what can you do. More recent is the review of the band’s Wrexham Station gig a few days ago from Glasswerk, and this one from Fat Amp Music of the band’s recent Modest Mouse support slot in Wolverhampton.

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Now that the Witching Hour news assault is over, here’s a few things that have been around a while but never had the privilege of a mention on inaudible.co.uk…

Way back in 2005 The Crimea played a live acoustic session for the WOXY radio station in America. Strange then that it’s taken me until now to find this page on the woxy.com website with a 24 MB MP3 download of the whole session. Check it out for some old Crimea classics, then check out the Flickr page with pics of the band recording the session.

Featuring a number of reviews and photos from different Crimea gigs is the eFestivals Crimea page, including a link to this review from last year on the eGigs site. If you fancy a more personal experience, there’s also a partial upcoming gig listing with links to online ticket outlets.

There’s also a review of the Pleasance Courtyard gig last year up on the Skinny Mag site, which says of Davey “part Rain Man, part Bright Eyes, but good enough to rival the very best”.

And finally there’s an old single review of Baby Boom up on Caught In The Crossfire, and a White Russian Galaxy single microsite at Video-C.

One more, Iain points you towards Plus One Magazine who have a review of a 2005 gig up. Go to Review Archive then search for “crimea”, or just hit more to read it.

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As you all eagerly await the arrival of your SOTWH hard copies (I’m sure they won’t be much longer…), here’s a review and some more release news to keep you happy.

The CD was album of the week at Today FM last week, so check out the Google cache or read more to see what they said. What did they think? Here’s a clue: “a well-produced and assured effort”.

There’s a small mention of the release on Gigwise, and also on the Instep Magazine site during an interview with a seperate artist, and finally there’s a slightly bigger article on the Dutch site Kidsweek.

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Regular Crimea reviewer Jim Carroll gives the album 4 / 5 on Ireland.com, the Manchester Evening News give it 3 / 5 but with little bad to say about it, and ICWales say some good but don’t give a rating.

Other than that, Noise Pollution and Whats On Winnipeg give the release story a mention, Monofiopia get a little nostalgic over the MacManus effect.

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Today’s articles come from Losing Today and Crimea regulars Room Thirteen who both have the usual news + gig dates.

The blog of author Warren Ellis contains the news, a hint of a review, and a preview MP3 for your listening pleasure.

And today’s foreign articles are slightly larger than usual. The Danish Urban site features a long article on what looks like the album release story, with a White Stripes twist. And German magazine Neon’s website contains what appears to be a fan’s explanation of each album track, though Google’s translation was less than helpful.

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