More Than This

Now that Malta has a new Archbishop I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate the new. If the Archbishop announcement hadn't come this weekend I would have probably used Espresso as my starter dough.

The votes for Listeners' Picks for 2006 on the Mużika Mod Ieħor poll are coming in fast and furious. At the same time a new album from BNI has just been released by Reciprocal Records and it suddenly occurred to me that the MMI 2006 poll does not capture all the titles it would if more artists and record producers kept me informed about their plans. I am always happy to receive information from musicians and their representatives, be they fans or record labels. MySpace is an excellent arena for this, but not everybody uses MySpace, of course.

To mark some of the acts that could have made it into this year's poll but didn't I thought I'd dedicate this week's podcast to such acts. The first is called Ether, which is Gavin Borg's latest project. He appeared on an earlier edition of this series as Gavinizer. This new material is more melodic and it seems like it may lead to a substantial release next year. The track I've selected is called Hope and it comes from Ether's MySpace page.

Aldo Lombardi is another electronic Maltese musician whose work has already been featured on my podcasting series. His CD album The Dark Journal, released by Butterfly Records earlier this year, is actually one of the highest vote earners on the MMI 2006 poll. That project is recorded under the name Kemic-Al. The one you can hear on this week's podcast goes by the name of Dimension-al. The track I've chosen to play is called Funky Jazzydelic, which seems like a very appropriate title.

Chris Farrugia and Adrian de Battista provide the next two tracks on this week's podcast. Chris is better known as Chris Radium, the name he uses to record his electro beats. The track Criminally Challenged seems inspired by one of those meaningless statistics that pepper the mediascape from time to time. Adrian's approach is rather different because he comes from an alternative rap perspective calling himself Nitrox. His song Let Loose is the only song on this edition of Mużika Mod Ieħor. I must admit that I'm not too crazy about Eminem clones, but Nitrox couples up with an excellent (unidentified) female vocal on this track. Is this the voice of Raquela? Will they be performing this song at next week's Poxx Bar gig? I wish someone would tell me.

I know that some of the regular MMI listeners prefer more hardcore music than the first four tracks I played this week. So, just for the hardcore fans, this week's podcast closes up with the sounds of Madame Mandy's Love & Loathe. I don't think it gets more hardcore than that in electronica.

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