Happy Christmas Everybody!

Have a great Christmas, everyone! I hope you have a lovely time, and
can be with those that you love (oh and get lots of pressies too!)

If you want to send me anything, it's not too late...

Peace.
Craig x

Oversol say... no more!

Sad news just in from Oversol. Best to let the boys say it themselves:

To all our lovely Oversol fans,

Firstly we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Jolly New Year!

Unfortunately in the Oversol camp, we have some sad news. Although we have had such a great time being part of Oversol and have had many laughs on the way, Tom and then Aaron felt that it was their time to move on. As for the rest of the band, we feel that it would be an impossible task to fill their amazingly talented shoes, and it has therefore resulted in the closing of a chapter in our lives too.

We want to thank you all for your amazing support, for all the CDs you bought and the gigs you sang your hearts out at! We hope you have enjoyed Oversol as much as we have. Who knows, you may see some of us venturing out in other things soon!

Love from Oversol 
========================

As a token of thanks for your support over the last few years, we'd like to give you a little something to remember us by. After rooting through the Oversol archives, we've found some recordings that you may not have heard, and we thought it would be nice to share them with you. So if you visit Oversol.co.uk then you'll find 4 EPs to download - totally free of course! We're giving away 17 tracks, ranging from demos which were recorded back in 2003, to acoustic versions, to more recent recordings. It's been interesting listening back to the old stuff, and hearing how our sound changed over the years - there's certainly a variety of material there, in terms of both style and quality! Hopefully you'll find something to enjoy.

As we said in the announcement above, it's been a lot of fun. Enjoy the festive season and hopefully we'll see you again in the future.

Love from Aaron, Mogs, Nathan, Rees and Tom xx

So there you have it, the end of another great hope for the future. Who knows, maybe if more people had bought their stuff then they'd still be going, but that's life. We here at the 'Slut wish them all the best for the future - and thanks for all the free stuff!

The Great Coca-Cola/iTunes Giveaway

So here's how it works. You buy a bottle of Coke, and on the back of the label is a code. You type that code into iTunes and you get a free download. So far so good, Coca-Cola sells lots of its lovely fizzy beverages and the punter gets lots of free songs. But - and here's the catch - you can only have five songs per person. So, no matter how much Coke you drink, you can only have five songs.

Now it seems to me that this is all a bit, well, screwy. If Coke had printed the codes in a few bottles, rather than every single one, then people would buy more Coke in order to find the free songs. Better still, there could have been a scale of prizes, from single downloads, to multiple downloads, up to an iPod, iMac and ten thousand free downloads. I know I'd have been buying Coke till it came out of my ears.

Oh well, maybe I should go into marketing.

Batman Begins Again

SFX - The Dark Knight is go: "Nolan will indeed direct the follow-up, The Dark Knight and Christian Bale is once again slipping into the Bat suit.

This time around - as predicted at the end of Begins - he'll be facing off against the maniacal Joker. And Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger is the man in the frame."

Good news indeed. Thank god both Nolan and Bale have recommitted to the project - it would have been a pity to have to change once again! Cool title too. Thanks God it wasn't the same as my headline!

The Return of Scritti Politti: "White Bread, Black Beer"

Ever since the release of 1999's Anomie & Bonhomie, things had been a mite quiet on the Scritti front, but then things started to happen. Green Gartside played a couple of gigs under the name Double G and The Traitorous 3 (the first time he'd ventured on stage in about 25 years), and rumours were flying around about a new album, due to be released in April on Rough Trade, the label they'd started off on, back in 1982.

And on May 29th, White Bread, Black Beer was released to the world, and to outstanding critical acclaim. A much more stripped-down affair, the album was written, produced and recorded by Green in his own home in Peckham. Gone were the hip-hop influences (intrusions?) of Anhomie & Bonhomie, to be replaced by a more acoustic (guitars!), more laid-back feel. Songs with titles like "The Boom Boom Bap" feel like they should have the verve and boisterousness of Provision's "Boom! There She Was", but it's actually a beautiful, mellow song - albeit with a trademark Scritti booming bassline.

The album has a stealth-like quality, sneaking up on you. At first listen, fans of Cupid and Psyche '85 (Best Album in the World, Ever) may not like it's subdued quality, but then the sheer beauty of Green's androgynous vocals, looped and harmonized will take hold of you, seducing you and drawing you in. Green's trademark turn of phrase is still present: "Coming with the force of an illocution", "small paper packages washed down with gin" and "You bet your Petrococadollar"

It's been a long time coming, but it was worth it. Better than Cupid and Psyche '85? Not quite, but it comes a definite second - as another reviewer said, this is the album Provision should have been, after its heralding single "Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)". In short, this is a truly beautiful album, and well worth a listen. Get it here now!