I’m informed by those wiser than myself, that the current hoard of 20bzillion blog stories on The Crimea over the past two months is not enough. In what’s clearly an attempt to destroy my favorite keyboard by an endless hammering of keys, those in the know want more more more Crimea stories in your favorite blog. If you’re not content with my constant Crimea plugs on WeHeartMusic (new one with more Julz vids just posted) then get on the e-pops to any one of the blogs listed on The Hype Machine. Here’s a select few, and when I say select, I mean whatever my right click hits first. If they’re shit, I’m innocent.

ANALOG Blog, Dreams Of Horses, Sad Music, What Comets, Stars and Moons are All About, Sounds Like Funday, Coffee & Cigarettes, Lost In Your Inbox…

The Crimea say: Take off your coat, it’s gonna be a long night!
While I watch another britpop night on BBC3, Owen Joe chokes on Ween and you lot get 2 more Crimea gigs to frequent. Now I must go, Sleeper are on.

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She looks so young too Must be getting slow in her old age though cos I’m sure I ain’t heard her play that fast since It’s from 2002 and yes, yes, I know. Who?

Crimea fans, you have just one week left to win all you see to the right. The method is quite easy: send the answer to the following question to competition@inaudible.co.uk, the web monkeys will do the rest.

What is the title of the second track from The Crimea’s first official CD release?

Further details and a little clue can be found in the original competition post or by hitting the banner above. Good luck.

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.

There’s plenty of new clips of the band on YouTube taken while on their current Secrets Of The Witching Hour tour. Here’s a roundup:

One of the band’s biggest fans, user roadmutha has vids of songs taken from over four seperate gigs.

Having almost the whole of the Southhampton gig recorded, stereop999 shows himself to be even more obsessive over recorded material than myself.

And finally yertlepower has a couple vids from Sheffield Leadmill, a full recording of which you can still download in MP3 format from the downloads page of this site.

Lucky attendees of the O2 Wireless festival in Leeds and London last weekend will have got to see The Crimea play their first festival dates of the year. If you missed it, or just want to reminisce, here’s some O2 Wireless leftovers…

The London performance gets a tiny mention in Virtual Festivals non-Firefox friendly review of the proceedings.

The official O2 Wireless website contains a better-late-than-never biography of the band and also three short video clips of Lottery Winners, Baby Boom and Talking Nonsense. If you just wanna grab the .flv files, they’re here, here and here.

To end with, here’s two longer but poorer quality clips from YouTube user MadeWithCheese, possibly taken in Leeds.

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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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The Inaudible.co.uk Crimea back catalogue competition just got a whole heap better with the addition of some new very special signed goodies.

The winner will now recieve, along with the whole of the band’s back catalogue (well, minus the far too rare original Tragedy Rocks), a new Weird style gray t-shirt, fully signed by each member of the band (tiny bit of mud on the back, i guess they get up to all sorts in that tour van, it’ll wipe of…), and a copy of the brand new Secrets Of The Witching Hour CD album again fully signed by the band. And it don’t stop there, there’s also random extra Jagermiester goodies courtosey band sponser Jagermusic, a setlist, a copy of The Fly magazine containing a review of the album, flyers, a wee sticker…

Fancy any of it? Well could all be yours if you send the answer to the following question along to competition@inaudible.co.uk before midnight on July 5th (increased from June 27th due to rescheduled London gigs).

What is the title of the second track from The Crimea’s first official CD release?

Further details, pics, prize info and a little clue can be found in the original competition post here, also accessible through the competition link at the top of this page.

The Crimea will be performing at this year’s O2 Wireless Festival at both Leeds’ Harewood House on Saturday 16th June and London’s Hyde Park on Sunday 17th June this weekend. Unfortunately the Leeds appearance is the reason behind the cancellation of the Aldershot gig planned for the same day, see more about that just below.

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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Breaking news, and it’s not great news either… Another gig has been cancelled for as yet unknown reasons. Aldershot’s West End Centre website says the gig has been postponed to a later date, and the venue themselves are said to have mentioned the band may be playing in Leeds instead. Not sure about the last bit, but expect official confirmation of the main cancellation in a bit.

UPDATE: Cancellation is confirmed, read more for the official e-mail explaining why, and there’ll be more on that in a bit…

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He may have lost his L’Oreal locks and gone for an all together more scruffier cut lately, but Crimea drummer Owen Hopkin is still allowed out the house to hang with the best of Britain’s percussion talent on behalf of Drummer magazine. In this month’s mag he’s contributed multi-page interviews with a number of proffesional drummers including Funeral For A Friend’s Ryan Richards. I say you go out and buy a copy if only for the fact that it’s run by one hell of a nice bunch of guys who sent me a load of back issues when The Crimea were featured in the mag a couple years ago.

Sorry for the break over the last few days, audio editing is one horrendously slow process. On the upside, you end up with this: The Crimea, Live @ Sheffield Leadmill. A full gig download curtosey your favourite Crimea fansite, from the show before the best show of the tour (or so say the band, but Sheffield was pretty damn hard to beat).

Get it all on the downloads page; right click the links and choose “save target as…” if you have any problems. They’re listed in the correct order, though the playlist file will help you out in that regard.

A second, re-mixed version from Inaudible’s tech man Denyer may be available tomorrow, though personally I find the bass a little too quite and noise a little too much in it to recommend over the current available version. But if you wanna have a quick listen to both, here’s a sample of my mix and Denyer’s mix. Comment on your preference below.