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.

There’s a very educated review of The Crimea’s gig at Birmingham Bar Academy up on the Fat Amp Music site, with the reviewer leaving quite impressed with the band.

The Sheffield version of This City has a preview of the Leadmill gig still up. It may be a little late with the gig having taken place four days ago, but this one isn’t: Evening News 24’s preview of the Norwich Arts Centre gig on the 14th is still valid and contains a little info on the support bands too.

Album stuff now, and Mark Stanley’s blog contains a recomendation and pointer towards the free album, while foreign blog (still not entirely sure where though) Muzak! contains a review of the whole thing. Unless they number things as differently as they write them, that 29% probably ain’t great.

Judge for yourself though, as the Indiestore wordpress blog points you towards the 7Digital Idiestore online shop, official Crimea online retailer, where you can download the whole album from instead of the official homepage. Strangely enough they also charge £1.50 for downloading the album as a whole. Possibly most interesting though is the last paragraph on the blog which mentions some very interesting stuff. Just don’t trust it any more than those Bombay Sapphire Coma rumours.

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Here’s some vids I took the other night. The band’s cover of Je T’aime, White Russian Galaxy mixed with The Raconteurs’s “Steady As She Goes”, and Weird which goes out to all the street team, support bands and, oh yes, myself .

Two album reviews today with both Manchester Evening News and This Is Fake DIY giving it 3 out of 5, the former prefering the the previous album and the later liking the subtletie of the lyrics.

A little more impressed us Unkle Rupert who recommends the album in his blog.

Portuguese blog Remixtures also mentions the album and quite a lot more, though I’ll have to have some babelfish fun before knowing exactly what’s there…

Finishing with some gig based stuff, Room Thirteen review the band’s show at the Fez in Reading, giving it an eventual rating of 11 out of 13.

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A new radio session from The Crimea should be broadcast on the BBC’s Radio West Midlands in, you guest it, the West Midlands, 95.6 FM later today on Paul Frank’s Drivetime show between 4pm and 7pm. Sorry for the short notice, I’ll try and get it recorded if I can. They’ve just said the session’ll be aired after 6pm.

I’ve just got hold of some more goodies to add to the CD competition prize fund. Wisking it’s way to the lucky winner will, along with the rest of the stuff, be a Lottery Winners On Acid US EP (big gold promo stamp on the front though, best I could do), the US version of Tragedy Rocks with 4 extra tracks (if you just wanna buy one, play.com user importcds will ship it for £4.89 inc p&p), some Tragedy Rocks flyers and postcard and a wee little The Crimea sticker. Stay tuned for more updates on the prize fund; still waiting for the Witching Hour CDs like the rest of you

So how many of you have entered so far then? Well, not many. In fact I could almost afford to send CDs to every one of you, and likely will until some more damn people enter . Check this post for all the competition details, or just hit the link at the top of the page.

Least he still skates better than I do . Davey takes a spill in Nottingham…

The Crimea - What goes up… will still keep going up. Take that, Isaac Newton!
The latest update on the Witching Hour tour straight from the band.

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There’s a few new album reviews turned up on the web, and they’re not too shabby either. Stylus Magazine give the album a B rating, saying “Macmanus’s unappeased ache is the splintered reflection of the love-fearing adolescent in all of us”. Subba Cultcha also like the album, comparing The Crimea to Grandaddy, Brighteyes and Mercury Rev. And Manchester Music give a shorter review ending in a 4 out of 5 rating.

Pointing you in the right direction is the Morning Paper site with, dare I say it, hopefully one of the last album release stories I’ll have to write about here.

So, on to the gigs, and the BBC Berkshire site has a preview up of a gig last month. A bit late, but what can you do. More recent is the review of the band’s Wrexham Station gig a few days ago from Glasswerk, and this one from Fat Amp Music of the band’s recent Modest Mouse support slot in Wolverhampton.

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