Time for some long overdue thankyous from me to all those helping to make this site as great as it is…

First up, thanks to Lee at Velocity PR for providing content over the SOTWH release. If you want some decent PR yourself, they’re your guys .
Paul Duffy from the official site has also provided a few things and is keeping the street team in order.
Cheers to Inaudible authors Denyer and Iain for helping me find all those album release articles on the web.
Obvious thanks to Owen & the rest of the band for doing what they do best and giving me something to do with my life.
And finally, thanks to everyone reading this site, especially those of you who’ve sent in news / photos / various other random stuff or just left a comment or two.

As Colin Murray continues his Crimea support by playing a Crimea track on every. single. show. of his on Radio 1 this week. Seriously, check out the tracklistings or listen again, it’s quite a sight. I’m starting to wonder if he’s a bigger fan that I am. Anyway, here’s a few of the radio DJs that The Crimea want you to bug and request Crimea tracks from. The more the merrier, but start with long time fan Zane Lowe (seen right all buddy buddy with Davey & Owen at a radio awards do).

Zane Lowe (Radio 1)- BBC Contact Page (select Contact DJ then DJ’s name).
Bethan & Huw (Radio 1 Wales) - BBC Contact Page (as above).
Gideon Coe (6 Music) - gideon.6music@bbc.co.uk
Jonathan Ross (Radio 2) - jonathan.ross@bbc.co.uk

Today’s articles come from Losing Today and Crimea regulars Room Thirteen who both have the usual news + gig dates.

The blog of author Warren Ellis contains the news, a hint of a review, and a preview MP3 for your listening pleasure.

And today’s foreign articles are slightly larger than usual. The Danish Urban site features a long article on what looks like the album release story, with a White Stripes twist. And German magazine Neon’s website contains what appears to be a fan’s explanation of each album track, though Google’s translation was less than helpful.

Read more »

Hahaa I just noticed this on the band’s official MySpace page - I’m in their top 8 friends list! Apparently it’s something to be proud of anyways, if you’re down wit the kids like my bad self. *ahem*… You’ll never guess which one i am either Cheers, whoever put me there

There’s another fan made Crimea music video up on YouTube. This one’s for a song from the previous album, Gazillions Of Miniature Violins, and was made by Tom Feltwell, Ollie Hodkinson and Sam Powell for their A2 in Media Studies. Check it out below along with the fan made Baby Boom video by Alan Gillhespy that’s been around for a while longer.

I’ve just uploaded a load of scans of articles from various newspapers and mags on The Crimea’s free Secrets Of The Witching Hour album to Webshots. You can view them in this album, click on each image to view a larger version, and then click the “full size” link (a small magnifying glass with a + in it) to view the original size of the image if it’s still too small to read.

I’m also busy uploading all press articles and adverts to the same webshots account ( community.webshots.com/user/thecrimea ) to replace the self made pages on inaudible.co.uk which took far too long to produce. Therefore the image page on this site is also getting a little makeover, you can check there for any further updates to Crimea photos and scans.

Incidently, if you don’t like the new Webshots albums, and know of somewhere with similar functionality that you prefer, then let me know. I’ve already counted out Flickr as, unless I pay em money, I can’t have more than a few albums to contain pics and that’s just gonna look a mess.

I’ve just added a few new MP3s to the downloads page featuring Crimea related radio pieces that have been aired recently.

First up is the big one - all of the comments Colin Murray made on The Crimea during his four month long promotion of the band, playing each song from the album in the Black Hole segment of his Radio 1 show. Unfortunately there’s two missing - Requiem Aeternam which he played a few weeks before the rest so I had no chance to record it, and Several Thousand Years Of Talking Nonsense which he never actually played. But the rest of them were played and the comments are all available in one single MP3. If you wanna play each track inbetween comments, you can still download the whole album for free on the official website.

Owen Hopkin may have evaded you all with his appearance on Channel 4 news last week, but his interview with Five Live’s Drive show didn’t and is also available on the downloads page.

And finally Adam Walton impresses with his band knowledge, not only of previous gigs but also of a small upcoming release that you may wish to know about (unconfirmed as yet though). Check out his MP3 for that, and as he mentions it during the MP3, you can also get the live Crimea track Forgotten that they performed in the MS1 Club in 2003. Featuring former Crimea guitarist Julz Parker, it was broadcast live on Radio Wales as part of the Big Buzz festival. And just about everyone who’s emailed me in the past few days has asked for the song, so don’t be askin no more eh?

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.

Read more »

The release / delivery of the physical Secrets Of The Witching Hour CD album has been put back to the end of this month due to production problems. The band are real sorry for the delay, though please remember that they’re getting this whole thing done themselves with their own money, there’s no major lable behind them to whip up a few CDs.

Anyone who’s already pre-ordered the CD will still recieve it as soon as the CD are pressed and packed up. That said, if you don’t want to wait any longer and would like a refund, contact owen@thecrimea.net and they’ll sort it out for you.

For the rest of you, you can still pre-order the CD on the official web store (and delivered within the next few weeks) or just download the whole album, for free, from the band’s official website.

Read more to see the official word from Owen that was sent to all current CD pre-order customers.

Read more »

There’s plenty of new Crimea photos around the web, here’s a roundup of some of the newest ones I’ve found.

To start with, there’s a load of news ones on Inaudible.co.uk’s Crimea Webshots album thanks to Carole Button who sent me pics of loads of gigs from last year and some from the Proud Gallery gig this year featuring Amy May dueting with Davey on Requiem Aeternam.

Also on webshots is a few pics from the band’s gig at Star Live in Beijing a couple of weeks ago, thanks to Bad Vibrations on the official forum.

And there’s loads of pics from Saturday’s free Primrose Hill gig up on Flickr thanks to users wilrob7, Alibanana and clashcityrockerkat.

If you have any photos you’d like me to stick on this site then send em to files@inaudible.co.uk, or just let me know about some you’ve found on the web at christopher@inaudible.co.uk.

The Crimea have been in a few different papers and magazines over the past week, but these two are the only ones I’ve got scans of. I should get them up in the Crimea webshots album later this week but for now you can click the read more link to see em.

Firstly there’s the index and article page from Music Week for 12th May, detailing the album release and giveaway. You can probably still pick up a copy from the newsagents if you’re quick.

And they were also mentioned in the Telegraph on on 30th April in an article mostly about the Artic Monkeys’ album.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

Dance for joy you happy little monkeys as inaudible.co.uk’s wholey unofficial alt. downloads are back….

UPDATE: Oh, no, wait… you missed it. Oh well, there’s always the next release day And to make up for it, there’ll be a spiffy new comeptition up here in a few days .

Of course, you can aways get the official Secrets Of The Witching Hour album download for free on the official crimea website, or purchase the CD from their official online store.

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.

Read more »

The Crimea, flying high on a broomstick near you…
Mostly tour news, a bit about the cancelled Angel gig and a lot about support bands.

Read more »