Forty Two

It's Guy Fawkes' night here in the UK. The fireworks are nowhere as spectacular as the ones you see in the Maltese islands throughout the festa season but they're just as welcome, especially because they're not as noisy.

I was looking at my blog recently and I realized that I've just been too busy to blog about much else other than my podcast. I'll be able to gauge the effect that's had on the overall output of my blog within a few more weeks when I get into end-of-year-review mode along with my colleagues at MaltaMedia.

This week's podcast features some fairly seasoned acts along with a couple of relatively new ones. Rockers International from Mind's Eye Dub is the opening track, which I play as an excuse to mention the upcoming show by The Wailers in Malta on the 11th of November. Mind's Eye Dub where the opened the show for The Wailers when they first appeared in Malta way back in 1992. Back then David Magro used the name for a band rather than his solo studio work, as he has done for the last few years.

The supporting act for The Wailers this time around will be this year's sensational Maltese new band Tribali. From their delightful debut album you can hear the second track called Never Give Up on this week's podcast. Tribali's album is one of the many nominations for the top Maltese music releases for 2006. Voting from you, readers of this blog and/or listeners of my podcast, will start very soon. I'll announce that on this blog as soon as the voting page is available.

The other new acts I mentioned earlier may not have made a big a splash as Tribali during its first year, but you can still hear them on this week's edition of Mużika Mod Ieħor. If I'm not mistaken, The Wait is one of a very few original songs in the repertoire of Bee and Ade, a duo that first appeared on the local scene last year. They're developing nicely on the strength of a style (acoustic guitar and simple vocals) that enjoys wide-spread popularity. Bianca Caruana and Adrian Camilleri are gigging extensively I have no doubt that this will make them sound even better the next time they enter a studio to record another one or tow of their original songs.

Adolf Formosa is someone who has been singing original songs on an acoustic guitar. He recently sent me a whole CD with songs he recorded in recent years. This CD, or a slightly different version of it, may actually make it as a public release sometime next year. The song you can hear from Adolf on this week's podcast is called Geese. I must admit that the raw qualities of the recordings on this CD have grown on me and I have a great appreciation for this sound, which has not been cleaned up and shaved of any follicles that come with pre-digital age home-grown recordings. I never thought I would say this, but Adolf's recordings sound quite refreshing.

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