Here’s a couple of site plugs for you. First is Jonte’s Web Garage, a web design and hosting site by the same guy who made The Crimea’s official website so you know the man’s got good taste.

And the other one is Inky Design, a graphic design company that aren’t so Crimea related but it’s run by some friends and they need a bit of promotion so… If you need a logo or other design work by experienced artists and also the nicest people I know then check em out. If they’re good enough for Transport for London they’re good enough for you Between them and the above you could get your own online presence in no time. Now if only I could stop this site looking such a mess…

Spot anything different? Yup, the rarest of rare events… an Inaudible Crocketts based update! About bloody time too. I’ve managed to get the main Wordpress blog install, primarily used for the Crimea site, sectioned up so I can use it for Crocketts news aswell.

It’s not perfect, you’ll get the Crimea’s site style on any posts that aren’t purely Crocketts related, and the archive page is the same for both sites so the only way to get pure Crocketts news is scroll to the bottom of the page and hit “previous entries”. But it’s a damn sight well better than what was here previously, and there’ll be constant updates in terms of slightly Crocketty slanted Crimea news getting posted to both /crimea and /crocketts.

Anyway, comment away, and remember there’s always room for new crimea pics at photos@inaudible.co.uk. And of course, if you’re still missing a few tracks from your collection, you can always get in touch at christopher@inaudible.co.uk and I’ll get some MP3s to you.

To start the new news page, here’s the three earliest Crimea photos I own. Before Dan and Rich joined there was a drummer called Geoff and they played Rummers Wine Bar in Aberystwyth with a girl called Hannah…

One of the biggest Crimea fans I know (other than myself, obviously ) is the lead singer of Midasuno, Scott Andrews. No surprises then when he roped in Crimea lead singer Davey MacManus to provide some lyrics and backing vocals on Midasuno’s new album.
Released 6th June 2007 on Sugar Shack Records, the album Songs In The Key Of Fuck features Davey reciting a small 30 second verse in the religiously inspired lead single Don’t Drive (Faster Than Your Angel Can Fly). Here’s what Scott had to say about the duet…

”I’d played guitar on a track at a Crocketts gig a few years back, and being one of my favourite bands, I tried to stalk and keep in touch with them. Davey joined us onstage during our cover of “Lucifer” at Cardiff’s Compass Point Festival in 2003, and since then the seed was planted with the idea that he might join us on a recording in the future. Being a massive fan of Davey’s songwriting and especially his lyrics – I heard the “Someone’s Crying” (Taken from The Crimea’s “Tragedy Rocks” Album) and realised that the sentiment was lyrically very similar to that of “Don’t Drive….”. That cemented my idea and having approached him, he kindly accepted and helped contribute to one of the proudest moments I have had since the band started – not a lot of people get to work with their heroes…”

For previews of Midasuno’s previous ‘Til Death Do Us Party EP, check out their MySpace page.

Today I have something vaguely different for you - a SOTWH release article from the Hey Charlie! blog which focuses on the band’s history over the years and has a couple of preview MP3s from their past.

Also slightly interesting is this forum discusion at Glosunit which features an email from a university lecturer who wants his students to follow the Crimea’s album giveaway story.

More of the usual from PC World New Zealand and Darkpaw who both mention the release, as does Molly O’Poverty though she’s not quite as impressed with the album as the first two.

And the two foreign sites for today are Italy’s NovaMusica with a large review of the album (Google translation here), and Israel’s Ynet with an even bigger article on the release though all the right to left stuff confuses my PC.

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Clearly showing no signs of slowing down, here’s the the web’s latest Secrets Of The Witching Hour news.

Todays only review comes from the Dorset Echo who say “It’s just beautiful - invigoratingly strange, limitlessly imaginative and powerfully atmospheric”.

Biggest article of the day goes to the Wall Street Journal who mention the current download total (now up to about 28,000). The other big publication giving the release a nod is the Wired tech blog.

A smaller mention comes from the Exitfare blog by someone who’s clearly not just a fan of the music. The Corporate Anthems blog adds more fuel the “he’s Elvis Costello’s son” rumour which I’ve seen far too much of already. Newsday.com give the release a very quick mention while AOL add a new pic to their paragraph.

If you’re frankly fed up of all this Crimea news and just wanna vent your anger, here’s the perfect opportunity at the Oh No They Didn’t celeb news blog, who have the strangest idea that the album ain’t so great to them. Oh well, can’t win em all, but numerous readers their did at least download it, which is frankly the whole point of the release.

And where would you be without an article you couldn’t understand? No, it’s not more of the above critics, it’s the German MusicChannel site with… erm… a bio I think.. it has album news anyway.

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On the eve of the official album release date, here’s a few more reviews of the thing to persuade anyone who hasn’t downloaded it yet.

Chip Adams from The Tripwire says “For a self-produced and self-mixed effort, these lads have done a mighty exceptional job”.

Giving the album 4/5 is Entertainment Manchester, who also compare it to Davey’s former band’s first album.

Meanwhile, John Siwicki at Comfort Comes gives the thing 8.3 / 10, saying “the album will not disappoint”, while a review at the Free Albums Galore blog says “this is a band well worth checking out”.

As well as reviews there’s the usual bunch of foreign press too, this time coming from Italy’s Indie Music blog mentioning the album release, and Wales’ Radio Cymru who mention both the band’s album and trip to China.

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Chinese website Sina.com has posted two pics of The Crimea playing the MIDI Festival on May 1st. The first pic you can see to the right, the second one features Davey and a surprisingly long haired Joe. English link to the same pics here and here.

Flickr user Sarah Vossler has posted a collection of her shots from the Mao Live House gig in Beijing. Start here, keep hitting more and you come across Davey with a very familiar looking top. Jason Yuan has also added three of his own from MIDI.

And I just found a bunch of artistic looking pics from Latitude Festival last year on Nosher.net.

Thanks for the heads up on the message board; Colin Murray showed plenty of Crimea love on his Radio 1 show this Tuesday, playing All Conquering from the new album and giving details on its release. Being the first ever Crimea recording I heard, I’ve gotta say it pretty much lives up to the excelence of the original I heard around 4 years ago. And Regina Spektor could well end up all over this new album .

If you’re too late to listen again (skip to exactly 1 hr 20), he basically mentioned Davey’s previous band The Crocketts, the Tragedy Rocks album and their MySpace page. He also mentions that the album will be available for free at the end of April, and the band are just playing gigs for money as they’re fed up with the music industry. I know nothing about that, but the band have never really minded about the whole free thing. I guess it’s even more reason to get to a gig.

If that weren’t enough, Colin also said he’ll be playing a new track from the album every Tuesday, so tune in if you want some more. He’s not kidding, he played Requiem Aeternam a couple weeks ago. Read more it doesn’t say more anymore, does it? for the tracklistings to both shows. I might upload some of Colin’s Crimea love clips later, depending on just how free everything gets…

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YouTube account’s suspended! Finally, I have some street cred! And clearly not quite as much copyright permission over Crimea and Crocketts vids than one would hope an unofficial come official come unofficial come possibly-soon-to-be-official-again website could have. Ah well, back to the regular downloads it is, until I find another solution. This would never have happened if my Media Player For The Web? aka. “Distributed YouTube” idea had taken off / been invented in the first place. Oh well…

Yesterday I was gonna post a message along the lines of “what the fuck? where’d all the fun stuff go? why’ve i not been to a crime gig in years? why’s there still no one using the message board? where’s the old crox army…” Then I though no, that’s just exaggerating…

But Fuckit, cos I just found out that one of The Crimea’s most loved venues, former home-from-home to The Crocketts, Murry The Hump, The Hot Puppies, and every other band ever to grace the green green grass of Aberystwyth, Y Cwps / The Coops / The Coopers Arms pub owned by Glynys and Brendan Sommers has been shutdown.

WHAT THE FUCK? Please, make your way over to www.myspace.com/ycwps and voice your support for the only music venue I’ve willingly spend more than a couple hours in. Hit More for the closest thing to a press release you’re gonna get then check out images page on this site for countless pics of The Crimea playing there and for god’s sake, arbed Y fwcin CWPS!! (i sooo hope that’s the right “save”…)

Denyer: I’d echo the WTF — the Cwps has always been one of the most welcoming places in Aber, to visitors and the student population as well as local people, a real melting pot of music and cultures. It’d be a great shame if the town lost either it or its current owners. Here’s hoping there’s something we can contribute back…
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The Crimea @ Bestival last year —>

More to come though unfortunately most of it’s old Crocketts vids, but there’s some old Crimea stuff too. Check out the user page for pepsimax2k on YouTube for the latest, I’m uploading them pretty much as soon as I’ve got them on my PC and encoded properly. There’s most of the Crocketts stuff there already, though I’ll be adding them to Vimeo when it lets me and you can download the proper quality versions from there. I’ll mention on inaudible.co.uk/crocketts when they’re done.

Getting even more off topic; heads up for Lecia and ex-Crimea guitarist Julz Parker who’ll both be playing live on www.rawaudio.net on July 2nd and 9th respectively. I’m reliably informed the UK time will be 11am, but the sessions stay online for a week after just incase.

MORE UPDATES!!! It’s like there’s a right roarin Crocketts internet resurgence swarmin through the electrical airwaves as we speak :o) And I have nooo idea what that means. But - two words - As. If. LOOOK!! It’s Sooz, staring in some proper screencapped photo posey goodness, and the only decent image I’ve ever seen of the Crocketts motorhead style t-shirt. Credits go to Stephen on the Would You Go To Bed With Me website forums. The As If fansite also features downloads of many of you favourite Crocketts promotional teen drama episodes (trigger happy wha?). Check out the thread here where I’m trying to find out who ingeniously smuggled all the Crox shirts into the show, and register and look around the rest of the forum for the downloads (screencap’s from episode 15 (aka. 115)).
Stay tuned for even better Crocketts news, just as soon as I fail my major project at Uni. Weekend, then.

AN UPDATE!!! Yes, a rare occurance of the updating kind to bring you some very special news - A New Crocketts Online Shop!! The lovely people at www.corporationrecords.com have added muchos Crocketts goodies (and Crimea ones too) to their online store, and their special Crocketts only merch page has now replaced the previous shop page on this site. Check it out at www.corporationrecords.com/store/index/28, and if you have any problems then, as much as I won’t mind you letting me know, the store has nothing to do with myself (or Owen anymore) so please correspond directly with Corporation Records if you need to, not that you’re likely to have anything to complain about :o). PS. Davey’s book Unamazing Disgraces is available from the Crimea merch page, going live very soon at www.corporationrecords.com/store/index/27

This just in from Owen: Nuke Ibitha sand colour t-shirts and I Don’t Fucking Think So short sleeve tops are now out of stock. The shop page has been updated to reflect this so anything you see there should be in stock but it’s still a good idea to email Owen on the address given on the page to make sure before you send off any cheques.