Only When You Leave

Earlier this month it seemed as if the grim reaper was working overtime, particularly on Maltese fifty-somethings. The prelude came with the passing of the gentle mannered Dennis Vella: a great loss for the contemporary Maltese art scene. Most recently, after at least two other Maltese men in their fifties, it was my old friend Remo Mifsud who died. He was only 51 and a very active doer of many good deeds; truly too many to mention here. His name had graced the pages of this blog at least one other time, when he informed me that our mutual friend Maggie Borg had succumbed to cancer back in 2004. Aside from these four men, I'm sure there were several others I never knew, but who were loved and cherished by those around them.

Regular readers of this blog know that death is one of the themes I return to quite frequently. It is not a morbid obsession but rather a reminder of our mortality that drives these posts. I'm also almost constantly surrounded by obituaries and death anniversaries because of work I do in relation to aboutmalta.com's Today in Maltese History.

It easy to find solace in the living. Life is for living, and death is simply an essential part of life. Without making light of the grief that comes with death, I plenty of the vital energy and elan that's farthest away from death in my weekly Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast. John Peel was so right to champion teenage kicks; teenage dreams are indeed so hard to beat.

The opening song on the 180th MMI podcast comes from Wayne Micallef. This summer he has enjoyed considerable radio airplay in Malta with his single Open Road. Although I've already featured Wayne on a previous edition of my podcast just a few months ago, it suddenly dawned on me that I had not played this particular song. So here it is. I'm sure it will be quite well supported in the upcoming 2009 MMI Listeners' Picks poll, nominations for which will be appearing very soon.

I also played music the band Skimmed just a few weeks ago. Their single Can't Stop has been receiving widespread airplay in Malta ahead of the release of their debut EP Your Head Is Too Big For Your Head. The CD will be launched officially on Friday 25th September 2009 at Lo Squero in Floriana; and if that's not enough to encourage you to drag yourself there, perhaps I should also mention that the support act is none other than the fabulous Brikkuni. The song I've selected to play today from this new 8 track EP is aptly called Victory Kitchen.

U-Bahn are undoubtedly among the few Maltese electronica acts that have been active longest. However, apparently they're also one of the least willing to release full tracks for free listening on the web; to my knowledge they don't even have a MySpace page. It has also taken me a while to bring you their most recent hit, Beautiful Girl. It's well worth the wait and I'm sure that die-hard fans are more than willing to part with their hard-earned euros to add this track to their MP3 player shuffle playlist.

Moving on swiftly to the other end of the electronica spectrum, I recently came across the work of Stimulus Timbre, which is the name under which Keith Farrugia records his music. Flowing in Your Mind is an apt way to end this week's podcast. I'll should be back on the blog sooner than the next podcast to reveal this year's initial list of nominations of the 2009 MMI Listeners' Picks poll.

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 click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.