Single launch and BBC session this Saturday!

This Saturday we're launching our brand new single Expansion at The Cellar in Oxford at our Halloween party presented by Big Hair.

Joining us will be Desert Storm and Les Clochards, and we'll be onstage around 10pm. Doors are at 8.30pm and it'll cost about a fiver to get in (no advance tickets).

There'll be prizes of HMV vouchers and Witches goody bags for the two best Halloween outfits and there'll be limited edition CD singles given away to the first fifty people to make it to the merch desk so get your skates on!

All this plus cheap drinks deals and DJing 'till the early hours. What more could you want?

ALSO, you can hear us before you head out on Saturday evening from 6-7pm when we'll be performing a live session featuring brand new songs for BBC Oxford Introducing. If you miss the show don't worry - you can listen back using iPlayer during the week.

We'll be playing more new songs at the launch - we're really proud of them so be sure to let us know what you think!

See you Saturday.

Witches x

Second play on Tom Robinson Introducing

It's been an exciting weekend since we recently had our second play on Tom Robinson's Introducing show on 6 Music.

A year ago, Tom played Josef's Lament from the Heart of Stone LP, and last night (13th April) he played B O K, a track planned for our forthcoming second album.

Tom said it sounded Like Hawkwind meets Spacemen 3 in an underground cavern once inhabited by The Velvet Underground. That works for us! Go check out the track on our Myspace site and tell us what you think.

Many thanks Tom for helping to spread the word.

Our friends From Light To Sound were also featured, so an excellent show all round!

Obsessive-compulsive organization traits

I really ought to get out more, but I keep on finding things that need labelling correctly.

I'd downloaded A Quantum of Covers from iTunes, burnt it to CD, and was about to rip it to my preferred format (Ogg Vorbis).

It turns out that I'm the first person to try this particular manoeuvre, as neither MusicBrainz or FreeDB have the track listing for my CD ripping software to use - so I was compelled to go and fill it in at MusicBrainz.

Generally I don't mind doing this, as a little effort by me can potentially benefit a lot of people who subsequently don't have to type in all the info themselves, but this time the tedium/benefit ratio is not looking good. I'm probably the only person in the world who's likely to download that album, burn it, and then rip it with software that uses MusicBrainz - plus virtually none on the performers on the CD were in MusicBrainz, so I had to create records for them as well!

Doing this may be a "useful" outlet for obsessive behaviour, but I'd recommend all bands releasing music on CDs or other formats to add their entries in FreeDB & MusicBrainz (there's also Gracenote for iTunes, but I frown upon that for political reasons) - that way when your punters put the CD in their computer they'll rip it with the right names and titles, and stuff like Last.FM will work all the better.

And I won't have to do it ;-)

Anyway; in the end, we have A Quantum of Covers on MusicBrainz, and a few more Oxford bands with an entry there as well, so it's all good really :-)

Laters,
Dave B.

PS. Martin's studio is well labelled, but that's not my story to tell...

A Quantum of Covers on BBC radio

Yo!

The latest edition of the always entertaining BBC Oxford Introducing is available online until Saturday, and is a Bond special, featuring all 11 tracks from A Quantum of Covers - the Bond theme covers fund-raiser for Children in Need. Go and have a listen...

You'll be able to buy A Quantum of Covers from iTunes next week - make sure you get a copy, it's for charideee!

Laters,
Dave B