No Bling Show – Żulu Minn Nofs
What a great way to mark Independence Day! No Bling Show will be giving a live concert at the Old Malta Prisons in Corradino on Saturday 21 September. Without any shadow of a doubt, it will be a great gig. As it’s unlikely that I will release another podcast before the show, I wanted to start this week’s edition with this track of their 2013 album Ċar Kristall. As far as new Maltese music goes, it really doesn’t get better than this.
KulTural – Priscilla
The Saturday before Independence Day, KulTural will be appearing in Madliena with Mistura. I’m very fond of the eclectic sounds that this band brings together. Their Madliena gig on Saturday 14 September is an interesting alternative to the pop rock entertainment provided by Rockestra that same evening and certainly more appealing to the likes of me. I’m sure they’ll play this one as they’ve released it just a few days ago to promote the show.
Negative Spaces – State of Mind
This is the first of three video releases I’ve included on this week’s podcast. Produced by Niki Gravino, these young hopefuls return with yet another blast of catchy retro pop. I must admit that while this song is not half bad, I did expect something even better from this band. Perhaps they’re saving that for their next release.
Dry Connections – Reach Out
Wasn’t this one of the more promising newcomer bands of 2012? They’ve certainly returned with a strong follow-up. While they blind sided me with their debut, this time they’ve more than grabbed my attention with this song. The video is also quite appropriate for the song. This could be it for them. I wonder what they’ll do if it just fizzles away like so many other releases by similar bands from Malta.
Andi – We Can Try
I was recently speaking with my colleague Marlene Galea at SBS Radio in Melbourne about the fact that there’s a Maltese dancer called Cassandra Galea. Cassandra is her birth name, so she was clearly intrigued by this. I was therefore very pleasantly surprised when I saw Cassandra the dance in this video from this new singer-songwriter. Andrea Attard has picked Andi as her stage name. Her debut is produced by Peter Borg and features this video by Keith Falzon.
Krokus – The Dog Song
Dirty Dynamite, the latest album from the veteran rockers yields another single, complete with promotional video. This one was shot on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and is rather funny. Marc Storace sounds as great as ever, of course, and you can bet that this album will be in the top three of releases by Maltese recording artists overseas come the MMI Listeners’ Picks Poll over the coming months.
Nomad Son – The Devil’s Banquet
Doom monsters return with their third album called The Darkening, released only yesterday. This is the song they’ve released to promote it and I’d have thought they’d have a video to accompany it too. Perhaps that still on the way. I wouldn’t know because apparently I’m either not on their mailing list or Metal on Metal Records don’t send press releases to the likes of me. Perhaps it’s cause they wouldn’t like me to say that vocalist Jordan Yves Cutajar sounds a bit like Noddy Holder from Slade on parts of this track.
Ascendor – War Machine
I’ve already featured this new metal band from Gozo on a previous edition of the MMI podcast. They recently released this track online and I’ve been wanting to play it for several weeks now. Well, since has turned out to be a metal edition I think there’s no better time like the present to do just that. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, anyway.
Ballad of the Lost – Lies
It’s not often that you find bands who have songs with titles that are shorter than the name of the band itself. Their debut track was called Unexpected. If they remain together and continue recording, I believe that things can only get better for them. If or when they get to that, I really hope they don’t decide to change their name.
Evil Grave – Optica
This was undoubtedly one of Malta’s earliest heavy rock bands. I don’t know much about them other than the guitarist is John E Zammit Pace, who has gone on to much greater things within the Maltese music scene over the past four decades. I’m hoping that this will spur us all on to produce a decent information page about them on the M3P wiki. At the very least we need to record who the band members we can hear here were, aside from Zammit Pace.
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 għandFrans 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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