Better Get To Livin'

As the academic year winds to a gradual close I start looking at the best way to organize my summer. As you would expect, my 'to do' list is never-ending. However, for once in recent years I can see myself setting myself enough time to really feel that the summer has not passed me by once September rolls along.

One thing you can certainly continue count on is my weekly podcast. A glut of releases will undoubtedly appear over the coming months. This will not only make for several action packed editions of MMI but also continue to validate my plans to look at working on studying various aspects of Maltese music and music-making in the coming years.

The 118th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast opens with a song by Miriam Christine. She recently returned to the Malta Hit Song Contest, which I originally mentioned on an earlier edition of my weekly series last February. This TV contest is now approaching its final and Alone Today is one of the 11 songs that have made it to the final. I may actually return to this TV show to play you one more song in the coming weeks. As for the rest of the songs, I'd better not say anything else since I have very little that's useful to say.

Moving swiftly on to the sublime, I'd like to draw your attention to the upcoming live concert of Danjeli's Kakofonija (his most excellent album from 2007, which you can still download for free here) at Warehouse Number 8 in Marsa on Saturday 21 June at 9pm. Joining Danjeli on stage will be several of his recent collaborators, including Jon 'Pen' Mallia (from Sixth Simfoni) as M.C., Mario Vella (from Brikkuni) on vocals, Andrew Alamngo (from Etnika), Jimmy Grima on alto sax, and Michael Galea on drums among others. This event is not to be missed if you're in Malta, especially if you'd like to sample authentic Maltese music for the early 21th century.

From time to time I'm contacted by musicians I've featured on previous editions of my podcast. Brian Vassallo contacted me a few weeks ago to thank me for featuring something from his debut album from way back in 1998 in one of my podcasts. He is now about to release a new album called Angelique Beute. From it you can hear a track called The Eyes of Mercy. He's be releasing another track from this new album before it actually appears later this summer. All should be well received from anyone who likes popular instrumental electronic music.

In last week's podcast I included a song from Ambulanza, the Polish funk band fronted by Mario Cordina. He drew my attention to the fact that one of his other Polish bands, Skambomambo has recently released a CD called Made in Polska. So, to close this week's podcast, I've selected Taxi Driver from this CD. I'm in awe of Mario and how prolific he is in his music activities in and around Szczecin. If you've never heard of him before I recommend that you listen to the special podcast I dedicated to him earlier on in the MMI series.

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. If you have no idea what any of this means, just click here.