Hot off the presses this morning from across the pond — Blur have announced the roster of bands who’ll join them in Hyde Park for their highly anticipated reunion gigs this July. Among the chosen ones are Crystal Castles, Vampire Weekend, Foals and more.

The band gave the official word to NME this morning, and the hand-picked line-ups for the two nights are as follows: July 2 features Foals, Crystal Castles, Friendly Fires and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, and July 3 features Vampire Weekend, Amadou & Mariam, Florence And The Machine and Deerhoof.

Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koening told NME.com, “I think the Hyde Park show will be pretty phenomenal. People have been waiting a long time to see Blur reunite and it’s flattering to be invited to play at all. This will be my first time seeing Blur live and I’m psyched.”

We spoke with guitarist Graham Coxon about the reunion last month, and while we forgot to ask him who would be opening, he did speak about the process of reuniting and rehearsing the old songs.

Blur will also play Manchester’s MEN Arena June 26, with Klaxons and Florence And The Machine supporting. Ticket info for all three shows is available here.

All Tomorrow’s Parties’ two UK weekend festivals are starting to take shape as more bands were added to both line-ups today, including Health to ATP’s Fans Strike Back weekend and CSS to the ATP UK weekend curated by The Breeders.

The Fans Strike Back takes place May 8-10 at Butlins Holiday Resort in Minehead, England, and already features Devo, Antipop Consortium and Beirut, among others. (You can check out the full line-up here.) The latest addition to the roster includes Health, Shearwater, The Acorn and The Pink Mountaintops.

The second ATP UK weekend, curated by is one week later, May 15-17, also at Butlins Resort in Minehead. CSS and Supersuckers have been added to a line-up that already included Foals, Throwing Muses and Bon Iver.

For more information on ticket ordering, head over to ATP, and expect to be out around $300. And if you can’t justify international travel to see a good gig, there’s always ATP New York 2009, happening in September and curated by The Flaming Lips.

In case you were wondering the criteria for our best of 2008, it’s the result of the accumulated average of our writers and contributors picks. So while some records were universally lauded, if they were easily classifiable or polarizing, they seemed to fare worse than those that could be appreciated by a wide variety of people. Thus coming in at #11, the Foals Antidotes.

We also have to give them a nod for having a definitive Brooklyn-psych vibe, with production by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek and guest spots by the horn section from Antibalas on five tracks and Celebration’s Katrina Ford on another. Extra nod for ditching Sitek’s original mix, leaving their first buzz-building singles off the record and creating music that is not easily defined. Proving they are willing to take risks, and it’s paid off.

Sub Pop