Wow. Talk about a surprise. Davey and Owen are updating the Crocketts MySpace page.

Videos are on the way, oh yes. A band history written by Davey and Owen is also on the way, oh yes. Let’s hope Owen types that out because Davey’s keyboarding efforts…erm…well, sometimes they require a decoder ring to crack.

Live versions of Bluster Boy, Frog on a Stick and Ring of Fire are already available on the Player, along with the infamous Will You Still Care and 1939 Returning. All charming offerings sure to delight one and all.

And everyone start planning your trip to Valhalla in 2010. Ooo got you excited now, didn’t I?

Christopher - You know what this means Hol don’t ya? Some bastard had a whole live show recording they never told me about! Humph. Well this post should be resigned to the Crocketts site ( inaudible.co.uk/crocketts ) but as Hol don’t know what she’s doing and no one visits the place anymore… It’ll stay here til you all know where to go for crox news :o)

Crocketts fans. There are good things acoming. Very, very good things. Hopefully. If you value your crocketty fandom one bit, then keep checking this site throughout the coming months. You DO NOT want to miss this news. Can’t say owt more, I’ll get bollocksed for this much…

If you spot any errors or suchlike in the website, esp. the blog, then please leave a comment (hopefully they work again) and lemme know. Moving hosting provides is sooo much fun . But hopefully ’tis finished now, so on with the news…
Update: Hit more for a current buglist, they’ll be fixed asap.

Read more »

Sorry for the prolonged absense. New menu bar? Meh… Here’s some new music out and about that you must rush down to your local almost-in-administration record store and pick up for a discount price. Like two copies of Nintendo Fallacy for £2 each

The new 7″ vinyl only single from Midasuno, “Don’t Drive Faster Than Your Angel Can Fly”, is out now and available from HMV in a limited edition signed version. Someone cocked up though and it DOES NOT feature The Crimea’s very own Davey MacManus as planned. I’m assured he will be making an appearance on the soon to be released Songs In The Key Of Fuck album.

This next one is the greatest record I’ve heard in a couple years. My Disguise is a mini album released by Welsh indie band Halflight. Yes they did feature Owen Hopkin on their first release. What… you wanna hear it? Oh hear you go then: Halflight - Where The Pins Drop. Bear in mind that the new album blows it to hell. If “When We Danced” is not the greatest song I hear all year I’ve been playing far too much Ash.

Aberystwyth favourites The Hot Puppies have plenty of new stuff out, including a collection of old singles and a brand new one too. A browse around their site should tell you more than I can.

Here’s a vid of stuff by my second favourite Austrailian artist Lecia. I’m told the drummer only learnt the songs the night before and apparently the stuff sucks. I’d hate to think what that says about my musical taste cos only Julz is better than this. New album out soon too. Maybe I should just go back to the Club and Tim Wheeler.

Ahh I knew there was something I were missing… Crimea chums, gig support, and the only band I’ve ever seen get a 0 / 10 review (and that takes bloody effort, they’re no Hadouken but give em a break eh?), Swound! have just released their new single Disco Siberia. No sign of Crimea favourite If A Shark Stops Swimming but there’s plenty more to listen to on MySpace. And they have better t-shirts than you.

Now please excuse me while I switch hosting / servers. No updates / comments while we move please…

Please excuse the look and on rare ocasions functionality of the site over the next month. I’m updating the graphics as you may have noticed and trying to reposition everything correctly. Then I’ll be changing the menu bar from a frame layout to single page layout, and finally moving the site’s hosting provider. So err… if anything breaks, I’m probably fixing it while you browse, but if anything is majorly messed up for more than a couple days then do let me know at the usual address.
Update: Yes, this means ignore the temporary dual menu bar going on at the moment

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.

Old crocketts.net webmaster Holly has just send me a load of old Crocketts tour photos that her husband and former Crocketts guitar tech Will took while the band were supporting the Stereophonics in France. You can find em all along with amusing comments by Hol on the Webshots Crocketts album at community.webshots.com/user/the_crocketts. I would have used /thecrocketts but someone’s already taken that. If it was you… can I have it please? I’ll give you crox stickers and… stuff…

Here’s a couple of site plugs for you. First is Jonte’s Web Garage, a web design and hosting site by the same guy who made The Crimea’s official website so you know the man’s got good taste.

And the other one is Inky Design, a graphic design company that aren’t so Crimea related but it’s run by some friends and they need a bit of promotion so… If you need a logo or other design work by experienced artists and also the nicest people I know then check em out. If they’re good enough for Transport for London they’re good enough for you Between them and the above you could get your own online presence in no time. Now if only I could stop this site looking such a mess…

Spot anything different? Yup, the rarest of rare events… an Inaudible Crocketts based update! About bloody time too. I’ve managed to get the main Wordpress blog install, primarily used for the Crimea site, sectioned up so I can use it for Crocketts news aswell.

It’s not perfect, you’ll get the Crimea’s site style on any posts that aren’t purely Crocketts related, and the archive page is the same for both sites so the only way to get pure Crocketts news is scroll to the bottom of the page and hit “previous entries”. But it’s a damn sight well better than what was here previously, and there’ll be constant updates in terms of slightly Crocketty slanted Crimea news getting posted to both /crimea and /crocketts.

Anyway, comment away, and remember there’s always room for new crimea pics at photos@inaudible.co.uk. And of course, if you’re still missing a few tracks from your collection, you can always get in touch at christopher@inaudible.co.uk and I’ll get some MP3s to you.

To start the new news page, here’s the three earliest Crimea photos I own. Before Dan and Rich joined there was a drummer called Geoff and they played Rummers Wine Bar in Aberystwyth with a girl called Hannah…

One of the biggest Crimea fans I know (other than myself, obviously ) is the lead singer of Midasuno, Scott Andrews. No surprises then when he roped in Crimea lead singer Davey MacManus to provide some lyrics and backing vocals on Midasuno’s new album.
Released 6th June 2007 on Sugar Shack Records, the album Songs In The Key Of Fuck features Davey reciting a small 30 second verse in the religiously inspired lead single Don’t Drive (Faster Than Your Angel Can Fly). Here’s what Scott had to say about the duet…

”I’d played guitar on a track at a Crocketts gig a few years back, and being one of my favourite bands, I tried to stalk and keep in touch with them. Davey joined us onstage during our cover of “Lucifer” at Cardiff’s Compass Point Festival in 2003, and since then the seed was planted with the idea that he might join us on a recording in the future. Being a massive fan of Davey’s songwriting and especially his lyrics – I heard the “Someone’s Crying” (Taken from The Crimea’s “Tragedy Rocks” Album) and realised that the sentiment was lyrically very similar to that of “Don’t Drive….”. That cemented my idea and having approached him, he kindly accepted and helped contribute to one of the proudest moments I have had since the band started – not a lot of people get to work with their heroes…”

For previews of Midasuno’s previous ‘Til Death Do Us Party EP, check out their MySpace page.

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 »

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 »

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 »

Chinese website Sina.com has posted two pics of The Crimea playing the MIDI Festival on May 1st. The first pic you can see to the right, the second one features Davey and a surprisingly long haired Joe. English link to the same pics here and here.

Flickr user Sarah Vossler has posted a collection of her shots from the Mao Live House gig in Beijing. Start here, keep hitting more and you come across Davey with a very familiar looking top. Jason Yuan has also added three of his own from MIDI.

And I just found a bunch of artistic looking pics from Latitude Festival last year on Nosher.net.