Tell Me What We're Gonna Do Now

Now that the academic year is over and we're getting ready for graduation on Friday, I am slowly beginning to find enough time to start thinking about blogging on my adventures in YouTube and Second Life. Since today is a podcast day, I'll just stick to YouTube, especially because it is directly linked to one of the tracks on this week's Mużika Mod Ieħor.

Following last week's blast of new releases, the 74th edition of my weekly podcast opens with Red, the new single from The New Harmonics. There's a connection between this track and the final selection for this week, but I'll tell you more about that in a minute or two.

I'm always excited about playing new acts on my podcast. They're not all really new, in the sense that some of them are ones that have been around for a while but I just never got around to playing anything from their repertoire. One such performer is Fraser Gregory who avid fans of the alternative Maltese music scene probably remember in the original line-up of The Beangrowers. He now lives in the UK and released an EP called No Ordinary Eyes just a few months ago. I've selected the track Changes from that EP. He will be appearing at Gianpula next weekend, on Saturday the 21st of July, to be precise.

Unlike Fraser Gregory, Ann de Gaetano and her band Slur are complete debutantes on the local scene. What's most unusual about them for me is that I first encountered them on YouTube. Mercifully, the video for their song Back To You is not just another DIY job like the ones that start blending into each other after the second play. This video is produced by James Vernon and Neill Camilleri of Whiterock Studios who have great aspirations when it comes to camera-work and video editing. Ann is a welcome change from all the Eurovision wannabes on the one hand and the trashy I-don't-care teenagers on the other. Strangely though, it feels like she's just one tantrum away from going either way. So, watch this space just in case she does.

In an attempt to better understand the phenomenon that is YouTube, I established my own account a couple of months ago. I've uploaded a number of clips that were just sitting on my hard disk to see what sort of response I'd get for them. I am pleasantly surprised by the feedback I have received so far. By being on YouTube I have also discovered several other video clips by YouTubers from Malta, which range from various local TV clips to Xtruppaw fan fun and from relatively vintage TVM clips to a lonely divorced Maltese man stranded in Scandinavia. I'm sure that all this is just an ice cube off the tip of the iceberg that's about to emerge from YouTube in the coming months. So, more on this in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, if you're on YouTube and you have a clip or two you think I should watch please let me know.

Back to this week's podcast: the closing track is the new Kristina Casolani single Search, which sees her collaborating once again with her partner Toby. The new New Harmonics track at the top of this week's podcast too has a production credit for Toby. He is as busy as ever with various projects this summer, including a top 10 remix on the UK club charts. This week, Toby's remix for the Everytime it Rains by Sean Ensign shot up to number 9. Toby has also just signed the production of J Anvil' s track Another Day to Peeled Records, for an August release.

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 add the latest episodes to your My Yahoo! page.