EXCLUSIVE: New Music From The Crimea

Back in September, I talked a brief bit about a band known as The Crimea. They're a great band from London who in their own ways are revolutionaries in the music industry. Let me attempt to explain.

After forming in 2002, The Crimea first started to make a name for themselves when legendary BBC host/tastemaker John Peel began talking them up- going so far as to rank them above a band as prolific as The White Stripes. Buzz in the UK along with a great set at SXSW in 2004 secured The Crimea a record deal with Warner Bros Records. The first album, "Tragedy Rocks," was released in 2005. While that did okay in the UK and was supported by Radio 1 DJs and an appearance on "Top of the Pops," in the US the band didn't fare so well. Therefore Warner Bros dropped them in 2006 due to poor album sales. That's when the revolution began.

Without a label, The Crimea weren't so much shaken as they were tenacious. They kept working and recording and composed a new album, "Secrets of the Witching Hour," which was released in March of 2007. The really interesting thing about that was the band offered the entire album up for free download at their website. This was before Radiohead pulled out the "pay what you want" concept for "In Rainbows." If you're one of those people that needs artwork and a physical CD, that was also for sale at a price of £10.00. But since March 2007 (almost one year ago), there have been over 72,000 downloads of "Secrets of the Witching Hour." For the price of free it's probably one of the best things you can download these days and not feel guilty about it. After all that the band still toured with big names like Regina Spektor (who contributed small spoken word pieces to initial copies of "Secrets of the Witching Hour" before her label forced them to be removed), Kings of Leon, Travis, Modest Mouse and Snow Patrol.

If there's one thing The Crimea have proven it's that they're very much with the times and are smart when it comes to using technology. It should come as little surprise to learn then that the band is doing something a little unconventional for the release of their first official single from "Secrets of the Witching Hour" (yes, I do know it's been awhile between the original album release and the single release). They're harnessing the power of music blogs to get the word out.

Fifteen music blogs were asked to participate in this grand experiment, and I'm honored to be one of them. The new single is "Loop a Loop," which you can download as part of the full "Secrets of the Witching Hour" album. In honor of that single, 12 music blogs are exclusively hosting different remixes of the song done by various other artists. 3 other music blogs all get exclusive b-sides. I'm happy to report that I'll be hosting one of those b-sides. The song is called "Stoned," and it's pretty much about what you'd think it's about. But, you know, it's also great. This is the only place in the world you'll find this song available for download, so by all means go ahead and take it. I want you to have it and The Crimea want you to have it. By the way, a big thanks goes out to them for including Faronheit in their plans for world domination. I hope it all works out for them. Let the Revolution begin!

The Crimea- Stoned

Alternate download link (in case the first one goes down)

The Crimea on Myspace

Learn more about The Crimea, download "Secrets of the Witching Hour," and find all the music blogs where you can download more remixes/b-sides via the band's official site

Labels: exclusive, the crimea