The Crimea played at the MIDI festival in China yesterday, and will be playing various gigs around Bejing for the next few days. Here’s a round up of the Chinese based Crimea articles on the web.

Firstly though, here’s Flickr’s latest stream of MIDI Festival 2007 pics. I see no Crimea shots next but there’s some there’s sure some well dressed kids over in the big C.

Lord knows how but someone managed to sweet talk the Chinese government into thinking they’re some kinda superstars, and apparently Davey & Co were having tea with the big wigs a couple days ago. The British Council promoting them as the biggest British act at Midi may have had something to do with it. Somehow I can’t help thinking Davey’s gonna do something mental and fuck it all up. But I guess I found out where I know that Filter mag pic from

The lifestyle website City Weekend has a Midi Fest preview with a paragraph on The Crimea and comments from Owen.

And purely for the Chinese locals, Midi fest has a write up of the band on their site and China News is most likely mentioning the Witching Hour album giveaway.

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Here’s today’s latest bunch of “ZOMGWTF FREE!!?1??!11!” articles. And this is just the lot that aren’t copies of previously posted articles. I haven’t slept for 48 hours. I swear to god I’m stuck to this chair keeping up with stuff. Gawd, I gotta remember to eat too…

US music mag Filter, erm… filter in with some Crimea news. I wanna say something funny but fucking dieing here, you know? If you know where the pic featured on Filter mag (to the right) is from, lemme know cos I can’t find it anywhere.

Music news site Atomic Ned copy n paste one of Owen’s mailouts. I wonder if an atomic ned is as tasty as it sounds.

Longest forum thread of the day discussing the story goes to The Velvet Rope Forums. The three pages mainly contain discussion of whether 128 kbps equals acceptable quality or not. If it ain’t edible, I don’t care.

Austrailian paper The Age give it quite a few paragraphs, while blog Three Imaginary Girls only give it two, and it was the second highest story at GQ Magazine a couple days ago.

Both the AV Club site and the Idolator site come with plenty of reader’s comments, with the latter being a very good read.

And finally, the Any Given Tuesday blog point you where you need to go. And I need to go rest.

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The news of The Crimea’s giveaway has reached far and wide over the globe. Here’s a selection of articles from the non-English speaking countries. I’m gonna have so much fun on Babelfish adding translations for you .

In Spain, technology blog Emol have added their views to the Reuters article, and both the Madrid Press and IBL News websites mirror the story, with the later including the ever-enchanting Lottery Winners single video. Aswell as the vid, the IBL News page is also featured on what looks like a Spanish version of Digg. Far from 9 votes though, the 206 the story’s currently got at Meneame was goot enough to make it the site’s top story yesterday.

Finland’s Talous Sanomat feature the story with a pic of the oldest looking PC monitor you’ve ever seen, while the Elisa news site only has a nice pic of the main country there which makes you wonder if the place is as cold as it looks. Anyway… Finish-English translations welcome as Babelfish/Google don’t wanna know.

And Italy’s Wall Street Italia also run with the free album news, while the Venerable Bidet blog also add a post on the story.

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The band’s manager Steve Tavener’s been all over the radio the last 24 hrs. Not only was he RTE Radio 1 yesterday but he popped in to Radio Five Live too to speak to Anita Anand about the album’s release. You can listen again and skip to 2 hrs 50 minutes in, or just download the MP3 here.

Completing the Crimea’s transition from Rock to Indie to Brit-pop to Pop in the space of a day are the big boys, Reuters, who have a three page article on the album story. It’s a good read, and it also mirrored on The Hollywood Reporter.

US chart site Billboard.com give the story some page space, and it’s mirrored on the Monsters & Critics site.

Another technology site, this time PC Pro, has the story covered. It was accessible earlier, but now they wan registration… Whatever, just hit more to read it or try Google’s cache.

Once a great music site, now just some corporate shite, MP3.com a small section in their latest news roundup dedicated to The Crimea’s album release. On a totally unrelated note, I found the lead singer of the old MP3.com featured band Parrado on MySpace the other day. Go figure. It means nothing to you, but I care not.

Music industry blog Coolfer also gave the story a quick mention on monday.

One more MOG user mentions the story in their blog.

And I have absolutely no idea what this site’s about, but Mesta.net definitely has a Crimea related article in it. You don’t need to be a genius to figure what it says.

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Sorry if you’re the last to know. You didn’t think all those news articles were for nothing, did you? The Crimea’s album Secrets Of The Witching Hour, originally destined for a May 13th release, was brought forward and released late last night due to overwhelming demand. The whole thing is free, available in 128 kbps MP3 format with a pdf of artwork.
For old and new fans alike, the retail CD version of the album can be pre-ordered here, along with old singles and merch.

Feeling a bit Web 2.0? If you like the album enough you can vote for various articles on the thing at Digg and various other Web 2.0 sites. Cept I can’t figure out how the hell to add the vote buttons to this post, so you’ll just have to do with links.

Digg currently has two posts both with four votes. Post one, The Crimea releases “Secrets of the Witching Hour” album free for download, wins cos it has a comment unlike post two, Will all music soon be free?, which links to the Strange Glue article mentioned below.

The Gadgezooks section of Personalbee.com currently has it as top story, though with one vote it obviously wasn’t hard.

And for something a little more personal, you can rate the album and add it to your favourites at Rate Your Music.

Denyer adds: my quick shot at a Facebook Event for the album release. Invite people!

Over at the Guardian, Paul MacInnes wonders why a band would give away an album when there’s “still money to be made from recorded material.” Which makes me wonder how much take-home pay he thinks a typical band signed to, oooh, say, Warner Brothers actually make. Because behind the media impression of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, artists tend to end up owing labels money. More on that from Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, etc) can be read here. Basically, most album profits (except for a handful of worldwide superstar artists) go directly to a label, with a majority of acts surviving through gigs, merchandise and separate work. All giving away recordings as a taster for those things is doing is cutting out a middle-man — the internet substituting for a marketing budget paid for out of an advance — thus giving a band more to live on.

Of course, as Paul says, they need strong material to do that. Now, personally I don’t think people will be disappointed, but here’s the rub: head over to www.thecrimea.net and find out for yourselves. That’s a bunch of people putting their money where their mouth is. *steps off soap box*

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I should never have Google’d it. I’m gonna be sat here all day adding reviews, ain’t I? Good reason for it too… have a read of the below and you just might find out (though again, it’s not like I’ve had time to read em myself yet…).

The top audio story at Pocket-lint today is The Crimea’s free album download. It’s not much you won’t have read already.

It’s top story for the whole site on Strange Glue, so just visit to say thanks.

Second top story on ICWales’s Arts & Ents section is a slightly longer “Free” article with a Welsh twist.

The story’s one of the top three at Undercover.com.au and if you’re wondering why, you really wanna read this one.

Music blog Musical Justice just reference ye olde Guardian article, but add just a little extra something. Yes, you wanna read this one too, but I’ll give it a bigger mention later today.

Proving that a free album has at least a little wider intrest than just within the music industry, technology blog Tech Digest gave the story a mention yesterday. Again, the story ain’t new, but the audience sure is.

Possibly the best article of the.. err… last hour (gimme a break, they’re coming thick n fast today)… is from DJ Ivi’s blog at music website MOG. If you’re tired of the last 24hr’s hype, this guy tells it how it is. Well, dunno about the pop bit…

And another tech blog, Gadgetell, also have an article on the free album story.

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The Sun online’s Bizarre column is the next major publication to feature an article on The Crimea’s free album download. It’s so good, one wonders what they want. Anyway, the article’s dated today so you may find a copy in your local newsagent too. If so, let me know as I have some shopping to do.

Regular Crimea news source The Irish Times also mention the free download. It’s written by Jim Carrol, a DJ for Dublin’s Phantom 105.2 who reguarly spits out a few Crimea tunes on his show. Speaking of which, Colin Murray’ll be spinning a new one later today.

Israeli blog ?????? (Tachograph) has a rough translation of the Guardian’s Crimea article in Hebrew (thanks Stefab). Speaking of which, the Guardian’s article was the 2nd lead story on their music page yesterday, which again helps to explain the amount of hits to the site in the past 24hrs being more than there’s been in the past 4 weeks.

And here’s another version of the Reading Fez gig preview posted yesterday. This one’s from the BBC and has a larger version of the same pic.

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Silly me, thinking I’d get some sleep after that last post…
I think I’ve found the reason for that just slightly abnormal hit count for today. Everyone’s favourite band breaker, the NME just posted this artice on their front page news ticker. Titled “The Crimea give new album away free” it’s about as factually correct as Natalie Dee but don’t let that stop you reading. Instead of tarnishing yourself for life, just hit more to artificially inflate my own page count even more.
Indie nearly-men? Fuck off.

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There I was, happily emersed in some Crimea based machinima (don’t fret, all will become clear soon…) when one email changed my plans for the week. “Since the Guardian picked up on the free album, it’s all gone a bit mental.” There’s just a liittlee more to it that that. I’ll mention that when it’s done though, well… Anyway, that Guardian thing… I’ve not even had time to read it yet but the article is online here, though if anyone has a hard copy you I’ll love you long time for it. Like I say, I’ve not read it yet so I can’t say what it’s about, but it looks big, clever, and a bit bandwidth stressing. BTW, more pics from the same series at Getty Image (search for “crimea band”).

I’ve also been told to point all you newbs towards the band’s official website at www.thecrimea.net.

Update: Holy crap - site stats. See right.

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The Crimea: from London to Tiananmen Square…and back!
Leeds? York?!? XFM!!! Read the latest mail out for news on potentially my most attended Crimea tour since 2002.

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You know the deal. Colin Murray, another Crimea album tune, tracklisting after the jump.

French website and Crimea fans Sound Of Violence post news of the new album. It may say it’s great, then again it may say it’s shite. I ain’t got a clue cos it’s all in French and I defy anyone to understand the language. À cette même! Believe.

English Crimea fans Comfort Comes had album news a few days ago, but it’s dissapeared now. Google’s cache, while it’s available, or just hit more.

Everyone’s using Vox right now. Confuses the hell out of me; bring back Audiogalaxy groups I say. Anyway, at least someone’s posted about the Crimea on there. Yup, you guessed it, more album news.

Here’s details on one of the tour gigs from Norwich Arts Centre. More tour news coming very soon; if you’d signed up to the mailing list you’d already know

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Proud that a grand album do come for free.
And if you lose it, you’ll find it in your tele. Channel 700 on freeview, Tuesdays at 11pm. Hit more for tour news!

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Loop A Loop was Colin’s track of the week yesterday. Apparantly it’s his favourite song on the album. He also mentioned his clearly all-time favourite Crimea track Opposite Ends, saying that lyrics from it featured in the new album. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of what they are, so clue me in people. Anyway, listen again or hit more for the tracklisting.

Camden. Don’t you just love the place? I had a pet Camden once. I shot it. Erm… Camden New Journal have a preview of the last Proud Gallery gig. Don’t worry, there’s one more onthe 24th April so you too can get down there and nab your very own Camden. What you do after that is your own business.

Today’s album preview comes from The Irish Times. It’s only short but hit more to read it.

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