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Show notes for the 303rd Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Ellie & the Oscars – It’s Not a Crime
Eliza Borg and her band are back with another great track. Not sure why this band isn’t more popular in Malta than it already is. They sound really good and I suspect they’re not half bad live, even though I haven’t caught any of their gigs yet.

G-Force – Wasal il-Ġimgħa
What can I say? This is Maltese hip hop, which is slowly but surely finding its own voice within the subculture and spreading out into the mainstream. A video like the one produced here by Dirty Iris will go a long way in creating the indelible mark I’m talking about with regards to both the genre and the new generation of fans of Maltese songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1px01X3FM

Kontroll – Easy
Is this a cult classic that previously escaped my attention? Does this band belong in the same category as BNI, RAS, Norm Rejection and Pupi tal-Logħob? And do they really have an album outa this year? Why is it there’s so little I can find about this band online? I really hope M3P can rectify this.

Stefanos – Navigate
Stefan Mifsud continues to record more rock guitar instrumentals as Stefanos for a new album due out after the end of this summer. This track is one of these new recording ands sees the guitarist return to his preferred style of strumming.

Inverse Shift – Impregnable
Andre and Josef from the defunct metal band CoreFrequency last year teamed up with Max from Abysmal Torment to form this new band called Inverse Shift. They have produced a debut album entitled Endgame. This is the opening track from this debut album. More of the same will be greatly welcome by the many fans they have a quid over the years in their previous band, particularly those who can appreciate some of the interesting departures they’re experimenting with here.

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 302nd Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Jane Doe – S.M.O.
The musicians in this band have been playing together since 2008 but it was only last summer 2011 that they started calling themselves Jane Doe, recording their debut single Shivery in January 2012. This follow-up release is part of their upcoming EP. If the rest is as good as all this, I must say that it will be a strong contender for one of my personal picks for this year come the annual poll for the MMI Listeners’ Top Picks.

The Crowns – Never Ends
Recorded at Temple Studios and with a video made by No Sweat Productions, led by Nick Morales, makes this band clearly one that is taking themselves seriously enough to ensure that they achieve an even stronger profile than they acquired in their initial outings over the past couple of years.

3 Artists – Our Time
Niki Gravino, Errol Sammut and Nick Morales, each known in his own right on the local music scene over the past decade or so have teamed up to create this Mobile Internet GO commercial that will launch on Monday 23 July 2012. It’s great that such a major Maltese corporation has picked alternative rock musicians to promote its wares. Whoever is behind this campaign deserves a pat on the back from more than the industry pundits who will undoubtedly see that this move will help them reach a segment of the audience that’s not as easy to reach as the mainstream, without alienating the latter.

Bletchley Park – Tight Red Dress
On 14 July 2012 Bletchley Park are set to launch their next album at V-Gen in Paceville. The album is called My Body Fighting and judging from this song seems to be harder than their previous offerings. I’ve seen this band live but I like the extra touch they give to their recordings, so I’m particularly looking forward to this album.

Harriet Cohen – India
I’m not sure why Bletchley Park singer Deborah Borg Brincat picked the name of an early 20th century British pianist to record this song as a soloist while her band prepare to launch their album. I fail to see why she wouldn’t record it under her own name or why this song would not be included on the upcoming Bletchley Park album. In any case, it’s worth listening and watching, while the contributions of Red Electrick’s Peter Borg and Matthew James Borg (as well as violinist Simon Vella) make it even more noteworthy than it would have been otherwise.

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 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

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