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My Angel

Show notes for the 323rd Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

SkimmedRonnie
Skimmed are finally releasing their first full length album Summer Lovers on the 23rd of February 2013 at the intimate British Legion Theatre in Valletta. To hold us over until then, or perhaps simply to promote this launch event, they’ve released a single from the album, which is a tribute to 1960s pop icon Ronnie Spector. Although the band has produced a string of impressive single releases over the past couple of years or so, I must say that this is one their most impressive tracks to date. If there’s more of this sort of thing in store on the album, I’m sure it’ll prove to be one the first significant debut albums to be released in 2013.

ClandestinesTry Too Hard
I lifted this track of the split cassette release Summer Camp for Pale Young Boys, which Clandestines share with Hey Sus, for two reasons. The first of these is the fact that I need to follow up on an M3P exploration with band member Daniel Abdilla, but more importantly to have a good excuse to provide a link for the MMI 2012 Listeners’ Picks Poll, which is open until Monday 31 December on Facebook. The split album is obviously nominated on this year’s MMI poll.

Mel XkejfaStoryteller
Former Chasing Pandora singer Melissa Portelli returns as a solo performer called Mel Xkejfa. She has just released this track to promote her debut solo album supported by a number of collaborators from her time with Chasing Pandora. There will be a video to promote this song in the coming days (you can see it here when it’s out) and a live show planned for 25th January 2013 at the St James Cavalier Music Room in Valletta. The album Who Me Mel Xkejfa? was officially released on 3 December 2012, so it’ll have to wait until next year to be nominated in the MMI Listeners’ Picks poll.

XiolaHalf A Day
I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Maltese singer-songwriter Adolf Formosa over the years. His songs have been featured on several editions of the MMI podcast. This year he has been collaborating with a couple of fellow kindred spirits operating under the name Xiola and recorded an album comprising 13 tracks called Bay of Pigs. This is certainly no commercial release and my only criticism is that I’d really love to hear Adolf do some songs in Maltese one day. Meanwhile, this new collection from Xiola will be among my treasured 2012 recordings from Malta, even through I failed to included in the list of nominations for the MMI 2012 Listeners’ Picks poll.

Ħolma Qattusa feat. Robert Farrugia FloresTalba
Although not as sophisticated as I’d have liked it to be, this Maltese-language collaboration between Ħolma Qattusa and PDM frontman Robert Farrugia Flores is still quite a pleasing song. The video that accompanies it is not very imaginative, but you could argue that at least there’s a video for the song making it more palatable to spread through YouTube. If there are other similar collaborations in the pipeline, things can really only get better…so let’s hope that that’s what’s in store for 2013.

Mikiel HaberFranco Waqqa’ l-Gvern
Following up on last year’s Diska Vili, which is among the nominations for Top Online Release in MMI 2012 Listeners’ Picks Poll, Mikiel Haber returns with yet another timely reworking of a classic song (The Beatles’ All Together Now from Yellow Submarine) to comment on a socio-political situation currently gripping the Maltese islands. This time it’s Franco Debono’s rebel rousing actions, which have brought the Gonzi government to an administrative cul de sac after many months of delaying the inevitable.

The RSS feed for the Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also follow each new episode through the MMI Podcast: Facebook Fan Page or on MySpace. If you have no idea what any of this means, just enjoy listening to the podcast on the player right below this text.

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