Review one of the day comes from Indie London. It’s not much but it’s there.
Weyhey, rent-a-review time. Dave Adair’s review mentioned from the Glasswerk site earlier is now on AllGigs.co.uk and Manchester Music, though the later does have a rating of 4/5, something the previous two missed out.
Song publishers Nuxx have some news on their signing’s latest release. They also have something to do with those JCB boys too. If only they can do the same for The Crimea then it’s all good.
Not quite so good is The Guardian’s single review. Normally quite praising of the band, their most recent review seems to have missed the point so much it’s virtually a mirror image of what the band were trying to achieve. Though I’ll give em the “about not much” part :o).
Something a little different this time, a Tragedy Rocks album review from Silent Uproar who seem intent on breaking the record for mentioning the phrase “The Crimea rocks” more times than anyone else in the same review.
And that just leaves me time to mention the XFM session with Claire Sturgess, tonight from 9pm. If it’s anything like their last XFM session it’ll be just about the best thing you hear all year. And yes, I know it’s only January.
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I brought you news on Thursday about some exclusive Napster Crimea tunes, and now iTunes are getting in on the Crimea buzz too. Aswell as the normal 2 track Lottery Winners On Acid single download, they also have another special 2 track LWOA download featuring an acoustic version of the main track and an extra-special live version recorded at a gig in The Enterprise, London on October 13th 2005. You can get both tracks for ?1.58 or individually for 79p. At the very least I recon you should pick up the live version, if just for the Joe only vocals towards the end.

Lottery Winners On Acid is out this week, as the Torr blog informs us. They’ve also made it their single of the week.
As have Popex, who normally don’t even have singles of the week. It’s on their front page too, so that’s another i.o.u. for the mighty Channelfly empire then. A comment even mentions their’s an advert for the single on radio at the moment, I guess Warners are finally getting behind it.
Speaking of front pages, NTL have their LWOA review top of their single review links on the main page of their music section. Check it.
Has the single of the week status at Click Music been mentioned before? Ahh so it has, but did you spot the huge photo of the band on their front page yesterday?
Regular Crimea reviewers God Is In The TV pick up on the “carnival-ride lope” theme pushed by some clever PR guys and give the single a 4/5.
Five out of five is The Beat Surrender’s verdict on Lottery Winners, and they’ve also got a seperate post on the video too.
They don’t give a rating but The Downloader don’t say much bad about the single either.
Getting a bit nostalgic are Subba-Culture who miss Davey’s old band but still like the single.
But lest we forget, The Crimea have been around for a while now, and believe it or not, so has Lottery Winners On Acid. Norman Records have noticed this too and are starting to feel a bit Groundhog Day. I know how you feel…
So, back we go a year to Pop Culture Victim’s review which I’ll just stick here as basically it just says of the single “A happily mellow dream-like piece that has nice use of steel drums”. Kill em. I’ll bloody kill em! Right. Andy, if you read this, please mail me and settle it once and for all. There ain’t no steel drums in any LWOA recordings, yeah?!?
And perhaps the most important review of the day comes from the Top Of The Pops website. It may only be one line with only a few stars as a review, but that 4 out of 5 puts it join top place out of all their new release reviews this week. Lads, you’re as good as Elvis. Rock on.
I don’t know what this BBC site’s all about cos it’s all in a funny language, Scottish I think, but anyway it has the name of the single and makes the old cover art appear when you mouse over it. Spiffy, yet pointless.
Another small “doh!” moment. According to this message board post, the band played on Channel 4’s T4 show on new years morning. They was prolly miming anyways… :o\ Ems on this site’s board also mentions that the LWOA video was on ITV’s Orange Playlist last night.
And thanks to Dave in the comments for mentioning the Channel 4 Teletext single review on page 355 which, by the power of magic (or digital imaging), can also be viewed by clicking more.
Quite possible my favourite link of the day is from ASDA. If their online stocklist is anything to go by, you’ll be able to get fix of Crimea album goodness while picking up your veg from the world’s best supermarket. I’m sure the whole Wal-Mart thing was forced on them. And for good measure they’ve stuck the Tragedy Rocks album up as one of their 9 featured Pre-Order albums too! Yes, that did say pre-order but current owners needn’t get confused, it’s just being re-issued on January 30th so loads more stores should get it in stock. Great for anyone who’s been looking around and not found it yet.
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Buy Or Die! But have some free stuff as well…
And this one isn’t months old, either. Actually, it was only just sent out. How’s that for up-to-the-minute reporting.
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Yes folks, it’s now what we Crimea fansite webmasters like to call “The Week Of Hell”. That is, Crimea release week, with Lottery Winners On Acid available in stores nationwide RIGHT NOW! So I’ve gotta be quick, I’m off down town to see if Woolworths will finally stock a Crimea CD (Update: nohooo, a whole row of mcfly singles though). Anyway, here’s a list of what’s coming up this week.

• Monday 9th:
• Lottery Winners On Acid is released.
• Lucky lottery winners win a portable DVD player.
• Another Crimea Podcast is made available. Click here to download it.
• The Crimea perform instore at Sister Ray record store, Soho from 6pm.
• Tuesday 10th:
• The Crimea perform live on XFM radio from 9pm.
• Lucky lottery winners win a video iPod.
• Wednesday 11th:
• Lucky lottery winners win HMV vouchers.
• Thursday 12th:
• Lucky lottery winners win a digital camera.
• Friday 13th:
• Lucky lottery winners win a trip to London to see The Crimea.
• Saturday 14th:
• A Crimea session (may possibly be) aired on Virgin radio around 1am (that’s Friday evening, kinda).
• The Crimea will deffinately be in session on Radio 2 from 5pm.

That’s not to mention all the reviews that should hopefully be popping up around the place.

New year, new nervous breakdowns
Remember, if you want to read these things at any kind of useful interval then sign up to the mailing list via the official site.
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Win the Lottery! (We’re going home soon… don’t worry)
Yes, you can win The Crimea’s very own lottery. It starts tomorrow by the way; I don’t slack that much.
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In Pod we trust, Christmas presents and an invite to our party!
This ones all about the podcast, which you can still hear via the music player above.
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The Crimea - Surfing the airwaves like Kelly Slater
The first of the four latest official mailouts. Can you tell I’ve been slacking?
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No, we’ve not been mugged by spammers, the last few entries were actually posted by my new best friend Denyer who’s helped out loads by posting the numerous reviews I’ve encountered over the past month and not got around to mentioning myself. Hopefully I’ll manage to add some photos to them or whatever later on, but at least the text is up there. If anyone else is feeling a little Peter Parker, get in touch and you too can spam the news page with as much useless Crimea news and rumours as you like.
And with the free time it’s given me, I’ve finally updated the diary page (though if any of you who’ve read some of the latest reviews knows where they played the secret london showcase then the tell me about it, I know it’s mentioned somewhere…), taken all the old stuff off the gigs page, and I’ll try and update the downloads page with all the latest radio stuff later today (some of which you can already find in the media player above, just click on a track to play it).

Lottery Winners On Acid is released on Monday, of course, and the band will apparently be at Sister Ray Records from about 6pm for a gig to celebrate (news from Gigwise — they also have a review)… we’ve also got more early reviews for you, from Click Music, Channel 4 Out And About, Floatation Suite, Glasswerk.co.uk, Livejournal community The In Sound, A Musical Priority and Vanguard Online. Summaries behind that ‘more’ link.
Also reviewing the single are Culture Deluxe who, aswell as giving it a good write up, also list the single as number TWO in their reader decided weekly chart with only the Artic Monkeys looking much better above them.
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Hopefully I’m not adding in stuff already in the archives… I’m basically sifting through the links I was sent, though… next up we have a selection of band getting-to-know-you sessions, courtesy of Culture Deluxe (who also have an artist profile up), Drowned In Sound, Entertainment World and Caught In The Crossfire. Click ‘more’ if you want it easy.
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Pressing on, a bevy of album reviews… several for the recent UK version of Tragedy Rocks, a couple for the US version (due an official release this year) and one for the original UK mail-order album. They can be found at Vanguard Online, Screenagers (in Polish), iShotTheDeputy, Subba Cultcha, Heathen Angel, We Like Clubbing, London-Student.net, This Is London, Caught In The Crossfire, Whisperin’ And Hollerin’, and on a list by Babe_N_Co at Rate Your Music. Or just click that ‘more’ link. I may attempt a rough translation of the Polish review later…
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Hopefully I shan’t managed to screw this up too badly on a first entry… which is a round-up of live reviews Chris has found, courtesy of Nouse (a student press), iShotTheDeputy (a community blog), Channel 4’s music gossip blog, and Warwick Boar (another student press). Click that ‘more’ link for the collated text.
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Dermot O’ Leary will have The Crimea in for a live session on his Radio 2 show next Saturday 14th January. Tune in to 88-91fm or online between 5pm and 7pm to catch it.
There’s also a half page ad for Lottery Winners On Acid on page 19 of this weeks NME. I say look out for more LWOA reviews in the nation’s printed media in the coming weeks.
Charts wise, lord knows how Lottery Winners is gonna do in next Sunday in the official UK Top 40, but away from that it seems to be doing pretty good. It’s currently 760 in Amazon’s sales rankings (good enough for 7th place in their pre-release singles chart), so far has 708 votes for being “Brilliant” on Radio 1’s Colin & Edith CD Burner poll (vs. 171 for “Rubbish”, that’s only 19%), and is currently sitting at number 16 in Woolworths’ “‘NEW’ Only On Digital” chart. Whatever that is. But it’s higher than Franz Ferdinand so I don’t suppose it matters. Hit more for the full chart.

UPDATE: There’s also a Virgin Radio session lined up sometime. No idea when so if anyone figures it out, lemme know and I’ll love you forever. Or a day. Hit more to read the press release I got the info from.
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