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Show notes for the 277th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Red Electrick feat. Ray Mercieca & Rayvin Portelli – It’s A Shame
2010’s break through band have teamed up with the stalwarts from the Rifffs to record this song, which will undoubtedly be receiving considerable radio airtime in Malta between now and the end of the year. The veterans lend the young band considerable credibility through their experience, while the young ones pump some fresh blood into the old geezers. Still, it sounds like a match made in heaven.

Andre feat. IM – Can’t Be Friends
Andre Darmanin has never really featured on my radar until I heard this song. It is actually slicker than I thought it was on first listen. It’s really grown on me and I can certainly feel that he is maturing into this style of music. Pleasant enough to hear over and over but still not the sort of thing I would go out of my way to look for. Good thing it’s been front and centre enough for me to notice it.

FellowFish – Ordinary Madness
Fresh from years of experience with the formidable duo Chasing Pandora, Gozitan musician Keith Anthony is now fronting this new trio who are about to launch their debut album. The title track is featured on today’s MMI’s podcast but I had the opportunity of hearing an early pre-mix of the whole album over the past few weeks and it struck me as the sort of thing that will go down well with the people who like progressive acoustic music that’s not too pretentious.

Nicholas Haber – Hurry On
From time to time I come across young singers and/or musician from Malta who I would certainly never have heard of before the rise of the sort of exposure afforded to anyone by Internet. This one has some really good qualities and with time and some luck we may be hearing from him again in the coming months and years.

Crash Voltage – Crash Voltage
I don’t know much about this band. In fact, I’m not even sure what the name of this tune really is. All I know is that they recorded it on the 20th of February 2011 and that they are guitarist Evan Vassallo, bassist Neil Xuereb, and drummer Luke Micallef. The rest you can make out for yourself in this recording…or perhaps they (or someone who knows them) will care to elaborate on their M3P page sometime soon.

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 276th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Funk Initiative – The Liberators
To my mind, this band is a great contender for the best newcomers of 2011 on any of the upcoming award ceremonies. This follow up to their debut works is worthy of any established act and not someone who hasn’t even been on the local scene for a whole year. Gianluca Bezzina’s voice has truly standout qualities in its clarity and simplicity, particularly in the quieter passages of this song. The video directed and edited by Ed Dingli to accompany this song doesn’t detract from its beauty and it rather makes up for any weakness anyone can find in any part of the song itself.

Danjeli – Kaxxa
The release of Danjeli’s long-awaited solo album KontroNatura has brightened not only my week/month, but it is undoubtedly a cut above any other long-form release from Malta this year. We’ve already had many months to cherishthe outstanding Ġurnata Famuża, which to many will be the highlight on this album. However, like 2007’s Kakofonija, this album is packed with one gem after another. I will most certainly be playing most, if not all, of these tracks on my podcast in the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, you can either hear the whole album streamed on the Complex Sound SagaCity website or download it for free to play over and over on your favourite mp3 player, as I’ve done on a loop most of the time since the day it came out.

Ethnamorte – Belt is-Seħer
I rarely repeat tracks on the MMI podcast. Here’s an exception. This is a superb song from a very unusual band currently appearing live in Malta at V-Gen in Paceville on Sunday 6 November 2011 during the Calling All Tribes festival. If Malcolm Callus doesn’t strike a chord with this band for the Maltese crowd gathered at V-Gen tomorrow, perhaps he’ll manage to do it with his other new project Unus Quod Insane.

G-Force – Memorji Sbieħ
It’s no secret that I like hip hop in Maltese. I’ve been wanting to include something by G-Force ever since I heard him accompany Żdongraap on Qumu Minn Hemm, which I included on the MMI podcast no too many weeks ago. This particular track is a potted history of the local hip hop scene according to G-Force, and will certainly go down well with those who have only discovered that Malta has quite a thriving hip hop community more recently.

Franco Tartaglia – Une Vie, La Vie, Sa Vie
I’ve included music by this guitarist/composer on the MMI podcast several times over the past few years. It was quite good to receive several recordings from him by email a few days ago. So it’s only natural that I picked one of them to close this week’s podcast with.  The groove was just right after the varied but relatively mellow assault from the rest of this week’s eclectic mix. Something approximating a normal service will resume next week as we prepare to launch the MMI 2011 Listeners’ Picks poll. Meanwhile feel free to take a look at the nominees as listed on the respective M3P page.

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: 19:04 — 13.1MB) | Embed

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Show notes for the 275th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Cruz – Stalk Hawk
New single from a band that seemed destined to make a huge mark on the local scene last year.  For some reason they haven’t been as prolific as some of us thought they would be. This second offering from them shows that they may still fulfill their promise in the months to come.

RiSE – Star
Another solid offering for the local Christian rock scene.  However, there seems to be more to this band than simply meets the eye (or ear) on first listen. I can’t really put my finder on it.  Perhaps one of the many MMI podcast listeners can do what I can’t. In that case, just leave a comment below, please.

MsLeads – Memories
I thought I had already included this young duo on a previous edition of the MMI podcast, but a simple search on my blog reveals that I was mistaken. Ismael Valletta and Miles Azzopardi’s acoustic offering is by far the best track I’ve heard from them. If we’re lucky they’ll focus on more such tracks rather than seek to put a full blown band together, which will most probably simply make them sound like one of the dozens of other bands around.

Reuben Pace – L-Aħħar Moll
This Maltese composer and I were undergradate students at the University of Malta at around the same time, in the early 1990s. We lost touch after university, but our paths crossed again recently when he was in the process of finishing his doctoral studies in music and his external examiner happened to be one of my colleagues at the School of Arts and New Media, where I am now director of research.  This composition from Reuben Pace is quite remarkable, especially if you’ve never heard anything from him. Now that he has finished his formal studies, I have a feeling we’ll be getting more recordings of his compositions in the coming months and years.

Sonitus Eco – F’Qiħ Ħaġar Qim
Justin Meli returns as Sonitus Eco with an EP entitled Eku Neolitiku featuring 3 exquisite electronic tracks inspired by Malta’s outstanding neolithic temples. You can hear all the tracks through SoundCloud and download the entire EP for free from the Internet Archive.  Links for both those resources are available through the M3P link above, which is how we prefer to keep better track of what’s what and what’s not with Maltese music.

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: 21:03 — 14.5MB) | Embed

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Show notes for the 274th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast featuring music by performers from or in Malta:

Beangrowers – The Farewell Party
This evening (22/10/11) Beangrowers returned to the stage in Malta for the first time in 3 years to celebrate a retrospective of their four album releases (48K, Beangrowers, Dance Dance Baby and Not in a Million Lovers) at V-Gen in Paceville. The gig featured an opening show by Yasmin Kuymizakis, making her debut live appearance on the local scene. It seems that the Beanies are working on a new album too. Anyway, we couldn’t let all this slide by on the MMI podcast and decided to open this week’s edition with a song from 2004’s Dance Dance Baby to make sure we mark this moment in time.

Caravana Sun – Waiting
A few weeks ago I opened the MMI podcast with Feel Better, the delightful debut release from Luke Caruana’s Caravana Sun, which is the new name for the Sydney band formerly known as Carra. They are about to release their debut CD album at Bondi Beach entitled Rising Falling next Saturday (29/10/11) and they also released another video for the opening track from the album. The video 808 HD images set and shot under the cover of night in an abandon house using various LEDs, torches and flames to bring to life the haunted space that spilled into every room of a once-loved home. As each light source is introduced, it leads you into various rooms of the house, venturing under broken floorboards and through shattered windows.

The Run – Silver Clouds
This Gozitan trio made up of Ricky Bugeja, Matthew Cauchi and Mario Cauchi make their debut with this song and a name that apparently comes from the first letters in Really Undecided Name. This bluesy song is quite ambition sounding, not least because of its accompanying video (produced by Ricky Bugeja , but the band seems fairly aware of where it stands and can only really improve on this offering in the coming months and years.

Stephanie Zammit – No Hate Song
Relatively fresh from the significant impact she made on the local pop scene along with the pop act Baklava at the Malta Eurovision Song Contest 2011, Stephanie Zammit returns with a self-penned song that shows she is more than a one trick pony. I don’t know what the future holds for Baklava nor if they will ever delight those who like me appreciate whatever’s Maltese in all genres of music, but I’m fairly certain that we haven’t heard the last of this singer. The song is rather under-produced but you it at least has the potential to help Stephanie attract attention to herself beyond Baklava. That will serve her in good stead either way.

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: 19:51 — 13.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More