ICYMI: Yesterday Andy & Jimi spoke to Radcliffe and Maconie on BBC 6 Music. Up for discussion was vinyl, new music & future tour plans. Starts 2:20 in here.

Doves will appear at this year’s Sheffield’s Tramlines festival. The fest take place at Hillsborough park over the weekend of July 19-21. Tickets for the weekend are on sale now at the fest website.

Doves have been confirmed to headline Kendal Calling, Doves will play the main stage on the Saturday night. Tickets and more info available at the Kendal Calling website.

Getintothis’s Peter Guy celebrates Doves return with an article profiling Doves and their role in the 2000s guitar scene. An interesting article which finishes off with Peter listing his top 10 favourite Doves tunes, which has caused a wee bit of a debate over at Doves facebook group.

Read the full article here. With the polar vortex keeping this blogger indoors for the next few days, expect DMB’s own top 10 (or 20 maybe!) Doves tracks over the coming days! Feel free to add yours over at the above mentioned facebook group.

Jimi & Andy will be on 6 Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie show next Saturday Feb 2nd from 9am.

Whilst the band continue to reminisce on social media, here’s my entry. Another one for the ‘best Doves gigs’ catalog. This time its the Blackpool Empress Ballroom gig from 2004, the last of a trio of shows pre-xmas the band did to preview material from the upcoming new album Some Cities.

Fans came from far and wide for this one. In kind Doves treated fans to new tracks such as Snowden, Ambition and Black and White Town. A rare outing for Darker went down a storm! I recall Pounding being especially good this night!

Black and White Town was released as a digital download a few days prior to this gig. I recall being a bit peeved at having to join the digital revolution to be able to hear the new track! An ipod swiftly followed. Here’s some pictures I took on the night..

Apologies its taken me so long to do so, but many thanks to Gibbo & Darren O’Toole for allowing me to use their photos for the new website header! Gibbo’s photo above was the inspiration. James Bimson did some photo wizardry, I loved it and I thought Darren’s photo’s of Andy & Jimi complemented Gibbo’s Jez pic rather nicely. Thank you chaps!

Several of you have been asking about Echoes in the Alleyway. The site is now live again. Of course with it being over 8 years old, many of the links are no longer active but the music is still there! The album raised over £1800 for the Teenage Cancer Trust. I think its quite fitting the site is live again, just a few months before Doves perform at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Visit: Echoes in the Alleyway

Going through the archives, below is my ticket from the 2003 Royal Albert Hall show. It may have been 16 years ago but my memory of the show is still quite vivid. Listening back to the show again recently, Doves rose to the occasion as they sounded great live that night, it still stands as one of their finest live shows. Openers Asian Dub Foundation didn’t really go over well. Unlisted on the ticket, but the first opener was Doves own Rebelski, it may have been his first live performance? He was joined on stage by Jimi & members of Beats For Beginners and I also seem to recall John Paul Jones?

Not that I’m counting or anything, but apparently its only 78 days til we’re back at the Royal Albert Hall! Roll on..