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Show notes for the 348th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Bletchley Park – The Orphan’s Wing
Third track released as a single for radio airplay from Bletchley Park’s album My Body Fighting. Not sure I can add much else to that. Oh, and there’s a promotional music video too. I’m glad to see the Bletchley Park connection being made overtly this time.

Red Electrick – The Runaway
A rather ambitious music video prodcued and directed by Colin Azzopardi and Jean Pierre Gatt for a new song by Red Electrick. I like the song and I think it’s one of the better ones from one of the slicker Maltese rock bands. I’m struck by the use of the old Popeye village film set in this track, mainly because it was built when most of the people involved in the making of this video weren’t even born. I’m really getting old!

Claudia Faniello – When It’s Time
Whatever happened to The Common Talk. I thought they were on a brief hiatus while Claudia worked on this song for this year Malta Eurovision Song Contest. I only see one of the members from that band in the video for this song, which is her collaboration with her (relatively) new partner Errol Sammut. Wayne Camilleri and Errol Sammut have previously collaborated, so I’m quite curious to see what happens next with Faniello’s new found rock-chick adventure. Anyway, I like this MediaCAST video for the song too.

Avviż minn għand Frans il-Ħamallu
If you can’t understand Maltese then there’s really nothing to enjoy here other than some of Malta’s best video animation, ever. If you can understand Maltese, I really have next to nothing to add to what you can see/hear for yourself in this video.

Infinite Loop
New band from Malta. Interesting debut, which could benefit greatly from a better quality recording. Apparently this is one of the bands to come out of the Marsa garages this decade. I don’t recognize any of the band member names from any other formation that has graced my podcast in recent years, so as far as I’m concerned these are the new kids on the block. Let’s see what happens next.

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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. An archive of MMI podcast is also available on Mixcloud. If you have no idea what any of this means, just enjoy listening to the podcast on the player right below this text.

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Show notes for the 347th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

The Rifffs – Start the Revolution
It looks like the long awaited second album from Malta’s longest serving ska band is coming together nicely. This new song is one that’s among those recorded for the follow-up to Moonstomp, which only materialized 30 years after the band originally came together. I’m pretty sure that this second album is only months (hopefully not years) away.

Melbourne Ska Orchestra – The Diplomat
Since this week’s MMI podcast features two other ska songs, I though it would be most appropriate to include the new single from the Nicky Bomba’s Melbourne Ska Orchestra. This band has appeared in this series a number of times before, but I really like this track because its title gives me the opportunity to wish three people I’ve known for many years all the very best on their appointment to the diplomatic offices in Paris, London, and Brussels: that’s Vince Camilleri, Norman Hamilton, and Ray Azzopardi.

nosnow/noalps – Cherry Tree
This band stands out as one of the few in Malta who have recognized how to make the best of the tracks on the albums they release. Far too many times, excellent album tracks are lost on the die-hard fans who care enough to acquire the full album and listen to it more than once. Releasing a promotional video is certainly one way to draw attention to track after track from any particular album. This works well for nosnow/noalps.

Brikkuni – Ċikku ċ-Ċinkwina
I was slightly taken aback by the fact that the video for this song is billed as “unofficial” even though it features an appearance by the band, which looks rather official. I’m not sure what any of this really means, but then again this is Brikkuni, whose front man is a stickler for detail and fine points. He is also very outspoken, sometime with noticeable effect, such as the current debacle with the MCCA and the administrators of the new open-air theatre on the site of the Royal Opera House ruins in Valletta, who are demanding a €2,000 rental fee for the band to give a concert there. Vella and Brikkuni have withdrawn their plans to stage their gig there and in the process raised a broader dialogue of cultural management in Malta and the wider concerns relating to the financial value (and I don’t mean worth here) of artists and entertainers.

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. An archive of MMI podcast is also available on Mixcloud. If you have no idea what any of this means, just enjoy listening to the podcast on the player right below this text.

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Show notes for the 346th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Melchior Sultana – Summer
I’ve been a fan of Melchior Sultana’s music for a very long time. He is virtually unknown and this is a great shame, according to me. He has managed to attract some attention from music aficionados but not enough to make him anything close to a household name, even among the casual hanger-ons of the Malta music scene. To put it another way, I doubt you’ll be seeing him live at the beer festival in Ta’ Qali anytime soon.

Tricia Dawn Williams – Constellations II
It not often that you hear contemporary classical music on the MMI podcast. Whenever you do, you can be sure of two things: (a) there’s a Maltese connection, and (b) it’s good music. Here pianist Tricia Dawn Williams plays the second movement of one of Ruben Zahra many compositions. If you’d like to catch them both live in a very different sort of vein, you should head to Żejtun tomorrow evening for the Evenings on Campus (yes, I know that it’s not really on campus!) event entitled Kuntrasti, starting at 9pm.

Yews – Let’s Not Talk About It
Yasmin Kuymizakis has featured on previous editions of this podcast. I like her quirky songs but they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. In some ways you could say that this sort of minimal pop is an acquired taste. In other ways you couldn’t really describe this music as pop. Anyway, have a look at the video for this song, which actually came to my attention recent, even though it’s been out a few months, due to the fact that Yews has released an alternative version of it recorded live in a park, presumably in London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUtsVuMsX9U

Elder Water – Reasonable Distance
I’ve been wanting to play something by this progressive Maltese rock band for some time but for one reason or another never managed to get around to it. They’ve now released a song featuring British guest singer Joe Cairney from the band Comedy of Errors. It should certainly receive more airtime than it will on Maltese alternative music radio hsoted presented by the likes of Michael Bugeja, Lito Micallef and Noel Mifsud.

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 enjoy listening to the podcast on the player right below this text.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:05 — 18.5MB) | Embed

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