My Funny Valentine

Valentine's Day is one of those things that, to me, are synonymous with capitalist fat cats cashing in on people who think love shouldn't be equally intense on all days. I know that anyone who thinks V Day is "romantic" or "wonderful" will not only disagree with my humbug mindset but also plays beautifully into the hands and pockets of said commercial beasts.

Having said this, I hasten to add that I'm very lucky that my beloved wife agrees with me totally on this one. For us, every day is an equally perfect opportunity to express our love for each other. Perhaps not everybody is that lucky but I know that enough people in this world are able to truly love the one they're without the trappings of V Day to show it.

'Love is...' was a cartoon that marked my childhood psyche indelibly. Because of this, or rather in spite of this, I find that only my beloved can tell me what love really is.

Moving swiftly on, I spent several hours of this fine Saturday producing the 151st podcast in my weekly Mużika Mod Ieħor series. Now that we're firmly into the second month of the year, the steady flow of new releases has started. This week all five tracks that I've selected fall squarely in this category. The first comes from a new Pinkpube compilation called Tumult and Squawk, which was officially released as a free download on the 17th of January. I plan to play several tracks from this compilation in the coming weeks. For today I've picked Tunnellata by the delightful Danjeli.

A few days ago I received Jon Lukas Woodenman's new single. It's called Better Man and comes in what's being labeled as an "organic" version. When you hear this song you'll see that this singer's beautiful and seasoned voice is the main ingredient in this recording. On a second listen, Better Man may indeed start standing out as the best thing this man has done since recording the classic Can't Afford to Lose almost 40 years ago.

Milk Mi follow up last year's debut single Black Sheep with a single called Disappear. This is the first of two tracks with this title on today's podcast. I liked Black Sheep and I like Disappear even more. If a band can be so good on their first two singles, I really want to see what they sound like say five years from now...if they're still together.

This was the sort of thing I used to think about The Rifffs about thirty years ago. They broke up about 25 years ago, but reunited in 2006 and started working on a long awaited debut album. Moonstomp was finally released earlier this week with a launch gig at Tattinger's in Rabat. It gives me great pleasure and a sense of unexplainable fulfillment to play the title track from this magnificent album on my podcast this week. Let's just hope that we don't have to wait another two or three decades for the next album.

The second tune entitled Disappear on this week's podcast comes from SunSatION, whose music I've included on an earlier MMI edition. Back then I didn't know that Dorian Bugeja is the brains behind this melodic electro-trance music. It is a fitting ending for this week's podcast featuring all new tracks and sounds, particularly in contrast with the material I included in the last two podcasts before this one.

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