Put Your Records On

A hectic week has worked wonders to shake off the fluff of the Malta Song for Europe out of my head. I'm saddened by the news that the Malta Jazz Festival has passed on to commercial interests. And MagnumT's return to Whatever is just the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to the blogosphere for more.

It's with all this in the air that I recorded this week's podcast in my series of Mużika Mod Ieħor. The eleventh edition takes the acts at last night's Reciprocal Records gig at The Alley in Paceville as an opening salvo. The mighty Batteries Not Included (B.N.I.) provide the first track with a song from their second album Force Majeur called Civilisation. I like this band very much. In fact I prefer their earlier works, particularly as captured in their debut album Native Tongue/Ilsien Pajjiżi.

Last night they were one of two Maltese band on the bill together with the Belgian band Needle & the Pain Reaction. The other Maltese band was Particle Blue, playing their first gig in Malta following their recent visit to the UK. The song I've chosen to play from Needle & the Pain Reaction is called Unicorn.

The next band featured in this week's podcast is one that split up last October just after their final gig at The Alley. Hidden Sun is a band I've been meaning to check out for my podcast for several weeks. I finally got around to it and I must say that I'm quite impressed by their website. I'm glad to read that their split was amicable and that they're simply going their separate ways musically. Still, if experience is anything to go by, such a split will not be without casualties, but to be fair on them I should add that only time can really tell.

A few days ago I emailed Joseph Micallef from the Acoustika Trio because someone who visited Malta as a tourist a couple of years ago contacted us at MaltaMedia asking about his band. We got chatting on MSN and he's now in the process of starting his own series of podcasts. I'll blog more about that later. For now, I'm playing the title track from Acoustika's CD album Acoustic Dreams, with George Pollacco and Louis Naudi playing along with Joseph on a very mellow number. In the late 1980s, I had the pleasure of playing several time with George and Louis. I've been wanting to bring a recording of Louis playing percussion to the web since he passed away in the summer of 2004. Now I have.

This week I've also finally found the time to grant fellow blogger Kenneth's request for The Rifffs' original recording from about 25 years ago, Dance Music for the 80s Depression. A quarter of a century later that song sounds as fresh today as it did back in the time when we believed there was no future worth living. Things haven't changed much and the spirit that drives that song lives on. Perhaps a more accurate thing to say is that the more things change the more they stay the same.

The RSS feed for the podcast is available here or you can simply click here to subscribe directly with iTunes. You can also add the latest episodes to your My Yahoo! page.