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Show notes for the 301st Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Muxu – So Good
Matt Mercieca has really cemented his presence on the local music scene as the supreme maestro pop as Muxu. This song shows that he can (almost) do no wrong. The video is relatively low budget but works excellently; produced by Mark Frendo’s Fiction Focus Pictures. His choice of Amber as a backing singer is brilliant. All in all this is simply another hit from Muxu, who deserves to be even more respected than he is by his peers and pop music lovers alike.

Jacinta Caruana – Message to the World
Fresh from her recent visit to Malta, this Maltese-Australian singer is featured on the MMI podcast for the very first time. Her debut EP features several tracks showcasing her versatile singing style. I particularly like this one, which is a collaboration with fellow Australian singer Gary Pinto. Jacinta Caruana is also the lead singer with a band called Groove Child and can’t see why I wouldn’t want to feature them in a future edition of the MMI podcast.

Brooke – Fairytale
I always feel that Brooke should be more well known than she actually is. The video for this song, which has been in her repertoire for about a year or two, clearly demonstrates that she has the prerequisite qualities (at least on screen and in recordings) that most big-time pop producers look for. Perhaps this song will do it for her this summer, but I somehow feel that she has yet to reach the millions of pop fans that deserve to be introduced to her.

Three Stops To China – Detox
This grunge punk trio first appeared on the local rock scene just a year and a half ago and they are now poised to release their debut EP called Rite on 7 July 2012. At this rate I think they may very well be on their way to give Cable 35 a run for their money, even though the latter grungy trio have made great strides over the past few years. Now that’s a battle of the bands I’d pay to see!

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.

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Show notes for the 300th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Bustamento – Għamillu Karta
Taken from the album Intrepid Adventures to the Lost Riddim Islands (released on 14 May 2012), this Nicky Bomba ska cover of one of Malta’s most popular traditional songs shows clearly what great fun can be had by playing around with old stuff that has stood the test of time. If only more Maltese musicians would follow suit. You could argue that Bomba is so good at this because he is Maltese-Australian rather than straight up Maltese, but I think that would be rather short sighted. Meanwhile, here’s Nicky Bomba live at The Gathering 2, filmed at Zion in Malta on 3 June 2012.

Ivory Cross – Burning Alive
It gives me great pleasure to be able to include this song by one of Malta’s best loved metal bands from the 1980s. Mario Ellul directed the video you see here (which is sadly out of sync in this version) for the TVM series Mill-Garaxx, which I produced and presented in 1989. it’s quite a shame that this material is no longer in the TVM archives. Truth be told, many such cultural treasures have been lost due to the fact that the national broadcasting corporation of Malta has never had a comprehensive archiving policy. Thanks to fans recording this sort of thing off air onto VHS tapes, some of this stuff has survived, now for over 20 years. This particular song happens to be one of my favourites from that series.

The Breezes – Żernieq Malti
During last year’s M3P annual conference, Claire Tonna (and Justin Galea) performed a couple of songs written by this duo back in the mid-1980s. He father, Brian, happens to be the accordion player for this other duo along with singer/guitarist Miriam Haber Endrich. This song is taken from their 1987 debut album called Victoria. They are still active on the local scene with the group Iskay, and I’m hoping to play something else by them in the coming weeks. Many thanks to Andrew Tonna for marking this rare recording available to me.

Nicol Caruana – Għamillu Karta
The version of Lanċa Ġejja u Oħra Sejra that opens this podcast knows its roots in this version by Nicky Bomba’s father. This is from an album called Nicol Caruana that was recorded and released in Australia in 2007, when Nicol was 70 years old. I am particularly amused by the altered lyrics and the added verses to the traditional version of the song that I grew up singing as a child back in the 1970s.

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: 20:36 — 18.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More