Including explanations of the White Russian Galaxy b-sides! Remember, you can sign up for the mailing list here — recommended because they generally don’t all get archived here, they contain up-to-date gig information, etc. The other good place to check for gig info is here. Or indeed anywhere other than the Gigs page here, because Chris is busy and I’m only wired into the blog portion of the site… not that I’d have a great deal more clue what was going on if I were. Anyway, as far as gig dates go — use the official list/myspace. This has been a public service announcement. Oh, and if you’re really bored, you can read my single review… it has lyrics. Some of them may even be correct.
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To anyone still left in Aberystwyth (and I know most of you aren’t, damn easter holidays), The Crimea will be playing an acoustic downstairs at Y Cwps in the evening of April 12th. That is, just after they’ve played an acoustic downstairs (heh) in Andy’s Records. Just remember not to wear your portable music player head phones as they’ve now also gone the way of Davey and got themselves banned from the shop (?). Do whatever the hell you like in the coops though, i’m still high from last time (damn 15 yr olds :oP ).

In other news - Buy, buy, BUUUYYY the damn single… You want a second album don’t you? Free crimea stickers and things to whoever proves they got the most. Jon and elodie you’re excluded, I know you got about 50.

Weird link of the day - some crimea playlist downloadable thingy on Yahoo. Looks like Owen or someone compiled a list of favourites, may even be better than their podcasts.

More links - Culture Deluxe single review (9.25/10 with talk about munchkins and dribbling milk :o| ), and… err… that’s it, cos the Whisperin & Hollerin site’s down… eh well. Happy Easter.

Welcome Top Of The Pops viewers (wow i’ve waited a while to say that ;o), yes, these lot are *that* Crimea, though you can get to their official site at thecrimea.net or their myspace page at myspace.com/thecrimea. But if you wanna hang around this humble fansite then feel free, a downloadable recording of the TOTP performance will follow shortly. Oh, and it’s probably best I mention that the new single, White Russian Galaxy (as seen on TOTP) will be out tomorrow April 10th on double CD and 7″ format, you can get it online at HMV if you so wish (it’s the one with the beige cover, not the older colour photo one). On the other hand, if you thought they were crap and are ‘ere to slag em off, message board here, and Streets site here. Now I’m off to watch the hit counter rack it up. ‘Evenin.
UPDATE: Video now available, click here to download it. It’s 32 megs in size and in XviD format so you may need to download/install the XviD codec (get it here). For the technically inclined among you, it’s from a dvb-t mpeg 2 stream, encoded with Transcode (on linux) at 1000 kbps vbr multipass with noise reduction and deinterlacing, audio bitrate @ 128 kbps and it’s in 624 * 352 resolution. Obviously I’ve been doing waayyy too much encoding lately.
For those who want the original MPEG-2 recording of the whole show then I’ll gladly post you a copy burnt to disc, but unfortunately it’s a wee bit bigger than I expected (1.3 gigs) so I’ll have to go buy a load of DVDs to burn tomorrow before I go back to Uni with no DVD burner. Luckily I was planning a wee trip into town tomorrow anyway. Guess why?

Building up to that Top of the Pops appearance (Sunday 9th April at 7pm on BBC 2, folks!) here are some reviews of White Russian Galaxy I didn’t see links to further down the page… from Drowned In Sound, Comfort Comes, Manchester Online, Entertainment Manchester, Music-Dash, Rock Midgets, GigWise, Student Direct, This Is Fake DIY, and I Rock Cleveland. And of course the TOTP review!

Click ‘More’ if you don’t feel like trawling.

If you haven’t been to Myspace in the last few days, there are also April blog entries.
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I don’t quite think it’ll match the might of Gnarls Barkley by getting anywhere near number 1 on downloads alone, but if you wanna give it a try for The Crimea then their newest single White Russian Galaxy (out April 10th on CD) is AVAILABLE NOW at all good download stores, and I’ve not even got round to uploading the cover image yet :o\. The contents of all three hard releases are up, including the 7″ track.. Seichu…err… that one I can’t spell… Anyway, iTunes seems the cheapest so far at 79p a track. Here’s a link to the main release, I’m sure you can find the rest. Personally I’m waiting for the CDs. First time ever I’ll actually not have heard any of the studio b-sides on a release. Yay. Well, bar 10 seconds of the sei… err… yeah… alex’s fault :oP

Two sessions down, two to go. For the first two they played exactly the same set - White Russian Galaxy then I Think We’re Alone Now. The less said about the XFM one the better, but the Virgin Radio one was pretty good. I’ve got both recorded but for the sake of commercial harmony I’m hanging on to the for a while. Anyway, you should be able to hear the Virgin one for yourself on their website in a couple of days.
What with all this session stuff I almost forgot about this: Live Crimea Videos! Yeeaahhh… the Tiscali showcase gig videos (from a week ago Friday) are now up online. I’ll not spoil the surprise by telling you what’s there, just go check out for yourself.
If you’ve been visiting Inaudible for a while you’ll have noticed I like sticking up random music I hear around the place every now and then. Today is no different, but these lot aren’t totally random. Weapons Of Mass Belief were supporting The Crimea at the above mentioned Tiscali gig, and they’ve also had a few live videos of the night stuck online. And good god, I’m surprised there was even a stage left for The Crimea, the amount of tearing up of it they did. I’d say go and watch all the vids, and I sure as hell will, but they’re just too good to leave at that. Here’s the full download of the Black Line Ninja video (23 megs), now do yourself a favour and go listen to Thunder if it’s the last thing you do today.

The April issue of Rock Sound magazine, available now, features a full page article on The Crimea in the Exposure section, page 80. There’s a big pic too, but Davey ain’t gonna like that “Bullet For My Valentine” quote, right smack bang in the middle of the page, all blown up in huuge letters an’ everything. You might wanna read his appology here before checking out the mag in your local WH Smith.
While I’m here, I might as well remind you yet again of the Crimea’s upcoming radio appearances. Tomorrow, March 30th, on XFM between 7 and 10pm. Friday evening/Sat morning, 1am to 3am on Virgin Radio. Then Monday April 3rd on 6 Music from 10am to 1pm in the morning, and later that day on Radio 2 at 12 midnight (techincally the 4th).

Alright, alright. This Friday evening / Saturday morning at 1am, The Crimea really really finally months after first rumoured will deffinately be on Steve Harris’ The Edge show on Virgin Radio. Hopefully. Meh, I’ll not jinx it, again. Listen online at www.virginradio.co.uk or just click this link to thier highest available quality stream. It don’t even cut out every half hour or ’nuffin! Rip-tastic.

Erm… bad news: singles release has been put back to April 10th. Good news is the reason why: they’re kinda doing a bit of promotion on the 9th. As in, that logo on the left. I’ll believe it when I see it, but at least they told someone this time :o)
And if you’re awake later tonight, they should be on Virgin Radio’s The Edge show at 1am. I’m just off to set up my recording stuff now, and will no doubt find out at about 3am they’re not gonna be on. And I will break things.
EDIT: Just as well though, the thing cut out at about 2am. Stupid puter. They may be on tonight at 1am, but frankly I’m starting to thing this Edge show is cursed.

Wessex Scene Online -=- LWOA Review
music like dirt -=- LWOA Review
Xplosure -=- LWOA Review
Clwb Ifor Bach -=- Cardiff Gig Peview
artrocker - Brighton Gig Review
Tourdates - Crimea Bio
Glasswerk.co.uk -=- Liverpool Gig Review
Scenta -=- 100 Club Gig Review
Bitterscene -=- Gig Photos

And some more. Maybe I’ll edit out the crap later… maybe I wont… But I will put all the NewsUK.co.uk links in the More section, you need some kinda password or something to access them, your Uni might give you access, mine does :o)

channel4.com - SlashMusic - Out and About
The Crimea - The Soul Tree, Cambridge - turkeyphant's Journal - Last.fm
The Crimea
BBC - Radio 2 - Dermot O'Leary - The Crimea

Hit ‘More’ for gig dates as the band head towards the close of a successful five years of extended touring. Don’t worry, though, they aren’t disappearing. Radio shows are to come, and you can check out previews of two single tracks now over at Myspace. Nifty horns and guitar work! You can also vote for the band in an MTV2 chart (hint hint)…
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Win tickets to The Crimea’s Tiscalli showcase gig at the Bar Academy in London on March 24th. Details on the official site, and be sure to make note of the correct e-mail address for entries.

On March 30th the band’ll be in the XFM studios for Ian Camfield’s Music: Response show. Just a little interview or something, but I’ll try and record/upload it if I’ve got time.

And they’re on the bill for Birmingham’s Sound Station Festival on May 28th.

Gemma writes to tell us Colin and Edith (Radio 1) have White Russian Galaxy as their CD Burner of the week — which you can vote for at their BBC site. In other news, Davey is pissed off about being misquoted in the press. Bullet for My Valentine, if you’re reading, he didn’t say it. And there’s a radio session coming up on Radio 2 on the 4th of April. There’ll probably be a bunch of other promotional stuff to do with the new single along in a bit. Until then, if you haven’t already, you can check out the WRG video and this snippet of news about the Crimea / Puppies tour — they also have a single due.

Just thought I’d post this to show you all (read: me) what you’re missing if you’ve not been to a gig recently. The Hot Puppies - The Future Is Such A Beautiful Place. It’s kinda old now, but it’s what made me notice them to start with. And anyway, this is a Crimea site, there ain’t no such thing as an “old” song ;o)

Davey’s just turned in three blog entries in a row and, er, he doesn’t seem particularly happy… I suspect he’d be much cheered up by people going and buying White Russian Galaxy in the first week it’s released (which’ll be in about a month.)