The world's first cricket pop album is nearly upon us. Oh yes. Cricket pop.
The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon (remember him?) and Thomas Walsh, a chap from a band called Pugwash, have indulged in a spot of side-project fun in expectation of summer needing a soundtrack. The result? A concept album all about cricket. (UPDATE: Here's the review of the album.)
The project is called The Duckworth Lewis Method, named after a cricketing technique known only to the likes of Stephen Fry (and, we presume, Hannon and Walsh). Wikipedia tells us it is "a mathematical way to calculate the target score for the team batting second in a cricket match interrupted by weather or other circumstance". So there you are.
Tracks on the album, which is expected in time for the Ashes (tish-boom), include the contagious first serve The Age Of Revolution, Jiggery Pokery, The Nightwatchman, Meeting Mr Miandad and Test Match Special. The first two of these can be heard on their MySpaz.
“It is with a great sense of honour and humility that I come before you today to announce the forthcoming release of possibly the least necessary album of recent years,” jokes 'Lewis', otherwise Hannon with a cricket bat.
“I give you a kaleidoscopic musical adventure through the beautiful and rather silly world of cricket.” Riiiiight.
As notorious apologists for Hannon's music since last century, when we used to be a Divine Comedy fanzine (trufax), we've been aware of this album for months and have been waiting patiently for promotional material. There's still no video or MP3 to give away, but at least there's now a press shot. So we can wait no longer to ask the actually quite important question: Would you play cricket with these men?
In associated news, a new album from The Divine Comedy is expected in autumn 2009, Hannon's first since parting company with Parlophone/EMI following 2006's Victory For The Comic Muse. Thrilling times.
We also report on the New York readings of Caryl Churchill's controversial short play Seven Jewish Children
Next time: the Globe kicks off its new season with Romeo and Juliet and the Stewart/McKellen Waiting For Godot opens in London. Plus all the latest openings in London and New York.
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Ahead of its release next Monday (4th May), The Horrors' Geoff Barrow-produced second album Primary Colours, which was awarded four and a half stars in our review, is being streamed for your delectation in this little widget thingy in full here.
Seeing as we've yet to meet anyone who doesn't rate this album, this is obviously Quite Exciting. What's your favourite track?
So have you been following us on @musicomh? There was much tweeting to be had last night from Rob, Tim and me as we took in sets from VV Brown, The Big Pink, Marina And The Diamonds, Idlewild, The XX, Madness, Filthy Dukes, Tommy Sparks, Alessi's Ark, Wire and of course the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others. The Enemy cancelled, to be replaced by Idlewild. The general consensus was that nobody was too upset about that. The Joy Formidable also pulled out.
Today's weather looks nearly as good as yesterday's, albeit with a few more fluffy white clouds.
Which is handy, for this afternoon Island Records are running a canal boat from Camden Lock to the Constitution pub every hour, with various Island-signed acts playing, possibly including Frankmusik, The King Blues and Bombay Bicycle Club. There's the Indie Idle final at Bar Vinyl and a couple more comedy sets at Fifty Five and the Camden Tup.
The evening schedule again kicks off at 6pm sharp, with Little Boots taking to the stage at the Roundhouse and Underworld, the Electric Ballroom and KOKO firing up 15 minutes later with The Computers, General Fiasco and The King Blues respectively.
Headlining the Electric Ballroom tonight is Mark E Smith's The Fall (10pm), while Billy Bragg, Dan Black and Chew Lips set up the Dublin Castle for an eclectic and undoubtedly rammed evening. Kasabian take charge of the Roundhouse (10:15pm) after The View, while 808 State - possibly the bill's most startling choice - follow Frankmusik at KOKO (10pm).
If you missed The Big Pink last night and want to chime in on the debate about whether they're "genius" or "meh", you'll get a chance at Dingwalls at 10:30pm, while somehow VV Brown will squeeze in to the Barfly (8:10pm). Who will you want to see over everything else?
Aftershow parties run till 2am, with KOKO pushing through till 4am with Joe And Will Ask? and autoKratz among the DJs keeping things buoyant. We'll see how long we last...
The 2009 Camden Crawl is underway in glorious sunshine.
Garlanded people replete with wristbands are ambling about in a relaxed manner, the bouncers are being genial and in the media centre a conveyor belt of tonight's many and varied acts are processing past, smiling and waving and looking like they'd rather be in the sunshine.
For the first time the two-day festival is venturing into comedy this afternoon, while at the same time the World's End lines up bands and the Hawley Arms runs a programme of acoustic and not so acoustic performances. There's even a short films programme and a music quiz.
At the lock the waterbuses are enjoying brisk trade with full boats of decadent damsels floating here and there, and the canalsides are full to bursting.
The main programme gets underway at 6pm when The Virgins fire the starting gun at the Roundhouse; Underworld, the Electric Ballroom and KOKO crank up their speakers at 6:15pm with Bleech, The Von Bondies and Datarock respectively.
The big draws tonight are unquestionably headed by an ealy Roundhouse set from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 7:15pm - the Roundhouse sets have their own wristband access separate to the rest of the Crawl and are allocated on a first come, first served basis to capacity.
Also likely to be rammed is The Big Pink's Electric Ballroom set (8:45pm), Marina And The Diamonds at the tiny Cuban Bar (10:30pm), Dan Black at the Earl of Camden (10:30pm) and veterans Echo & The Bunnymen at KOKO (10pm).
But with 17 venues all with full programmes, finding something good to see is unlikely to be too troublesome and if you've not got a wristband you might like to know that the Good Mixer is free entry until full and has a full programme including Alessi's Ark, Brakes and Everything Everything.
We'll be tweeting this one for the most part, with occasional blog posts and full reviews too. At least till we fall over.
On Twitter, follow @musicomh for the lot and drop us your tips while you're about it.
Actor Out Of Work is a choice cut from multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Annie Clark's staggeringly impressive second album as St Vincent. Called Actor, the new opus is released through 4AD on 4th May. This time she's worked with various members of Midlake and associates of Sufjan Stevens.
On Actor Out Of Work she wraps a fantasy '50s technicolor melody snugly within an indie aesthetic of scrunchy guitars and thwhacking drums; see the video, below.
Clark plays a one-off gig at London's Hoxton Bar + Kitchen on 21st April; in the meantime you can read our review of Actor here, or download album track The Strangers for free here.
With their fourth album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix set to drop at the end of May through Bella Union, Air's former backing band Phoenix are already selling out venues.
This week's sold-out London gig at the Hoxton Bar + Kitchen will be followed in June by a date at KOKO - also sold out - and they'll be taking in crowds at the Secret Garden Party, V and Camp Bestival too.
The infectious free download that was 1901 is followed by the album's first proper single Lizstomania. Like the album name, it suggests they want the world to know they're aware of the names of classical composers. OKAY. WE ARE.
A version of this track will appear on May's Kitsuné Maison compilation. The video for it is below...
Big day for big music news stories, this. So here's another. The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of breaking copyright laws.
The filesharing service, which was set up six years ago, has been facing a Swedish beak on piracy allegations centred on allowing access to torrents for filesharing purposes. Its top brass intend to hold a press conference today (Friday 17th April) at 1pm Swedish time. It will be streamed on the front page of their site: thepiratebay.org
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde have each been sentenced to a year in jail but are expected to appeal. The site, which has tens of millions of users across the globe, includes a page detailing various legal threats they've received from everyone from Microsoft to Warner and from Apple to Dreamworks.
It's been pointed out elsewhere that anyone can use a search engine to find torrents too, so the verdict may have knock-on effects on how the search engines index files on the web. Yet with YouTube announcing deals with major film studios to stream movies free of charge only yesterday and Spotify scarcely seeing a day pass without being trumpeted as the saviour of the recorded music industry, it's also possible that The Pirate Bay, like Napster before it, could find itself fighting yesterday's battle before very much longer.
They're already set to play two Hyde Park gigs as well as headlining Glastonbury, T In The Park, Oxygen and the MEN Arena.
Now Blur have announced two warm-up shows, with the hint that there may be others, to members of their fan club at blur.co.uk.
On 13th June they play their home town of Colchester's East Anglian Railway Museum, the venue where they played their first ever gig.
The following week they head to London to play Goldsmiths Students Union on 22nd June. Alex James and Graham Coxon were both students at the New Cross college.
Belle And Sebastian head honcho Stuart Murdoch has a new music project called God Help The Girl.
The band features singers including Neil Hannon (more on him soon), new discovery Catherine Ireton (we think that's her in the picture) and a 45 piece orchestra conducted by Withnail & I soundtrack composer Rick Wentworth.
A self-titled debut is slated for a June release through Rough Trade, preceded by a single, Come Monday Night, in May.
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