Toni Sant's Blog

Friday, April 23, 2010

The End

This is a back-up of Toni Sant's blog, archived on the 23rd of April 2010.

The actual blog archives and the most current blog posts can be found at:

ToniSant.com

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Burn Baby Burn

Show notes for the 208th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast:

The Lesser Gods - Iconoclast
This new band was scheduled to open for UK-band Paradise Lost along with Knockturn Alley tonight but the volcanic ash that has suspended most air travel across Europe this weekend has meant that the gig had to be postponed. Luckily they've release a couple of demo tracks ahead of the show and this is one of them. The band members are individually well-known on the local music circuit, some since the 1980s. If this is what their debut recording sounds like I can't wait to hear what they'll be producing in the coming years.

Nicky Bomba - Rock Ya Mama
One of the most colourful Maltese-Australian acts returns with a new track available as a free download along with a cool music video. Nicky has been touring outside Australia for some time but he is still to make a splash in the Maltese islands. I'm sure that if more people knew him in Malta he'd really attract the kind of following he deserves from his ancestral homeland.

Akalé Wubé - Kokob / Mètché Dershé
Oliver Degabriele is a Maltese bass player who has appeared on several other MMI podcasts. This time he reappears with a new French band specializing in reworking Ethiopian. Their debut CD is due to be released on the 5th of May on the ClapSon label. Listen to the track I've picked from this collection and you'll get a good sample of the sort of thing you can expect from this band. I have a feeling that they look and sound great live too.

Jeremy T feat. Raquela - Loved and Lost
My good friend Mario Axiaq drew my attention to this track from late 2009, which I had previously missed completely. It's a delightful euro-disco song in a style reminiscent of the early work of Giorgio Moroder. It was with this song that Jeremy T participated in last years Battle of the DJs. I like Raquela voice on this track and I certainly look forward to more in this vein in the near future.

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 click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.

Labels: MMI, podcast

Saturday, April 10, 2010

I Put My Ring Back On

A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about the idea of changing the format of my weekly blog entries to match the basic show note page I also create for my weekly podcast feed. Last week I followed up on this but mostly because I was in Poland and had set things up to publish automatically. Now I'm back to a live routine so I think I should really give this idea some more thought to see if it has any proper legs to stand on.

If I were to write an unrelated blog entry this week, it would most probably be about the pope's upcoming visit to Malta and the controversy the Catholic church is enshrined in right now. Still, I'm not back into my regular swing completely, so that will have to wait at least a few more days. Meanwhile here's the entry about the 207th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast:

Toby & Scott Walker, featuring Taya Cade - Blame
Toby returns with a new track that opens with a sound that's quite similar to the Traces theme song he produced with Kristina Casolani in 2008. Still, Blame is quite a different song and Taya Cade's voice really takes it to a different place. In case you're wondering, this Scott Walker is not the legendary baritone voice from the Walker Brothers.

Lyndsay Pace - Zip It Up
One of the most enjoyable Maltese pop voice returns with a follow-up to the sensational System Overload from just a few months ago. The best thing about this young singer is that she seems to be above the drivel associated with pop music in Malta, which seems to gravitate a little too much towards the Eurovision Song Contest.

Different Strings - Victims of Love
Victims of Love is a new EP by Chris Mallia. Proceeds from this CD are designated for the family of Noel Cauchi who died in a fatal accident at the Malta International Airport last November, while working on a cherry picker. I've picked the title track from this EP and it's quite refreshing to hear the voice of Errol Cutajar on this song. This is by far the best material from Different Strings to date.

Divine Sinners - Rattle Snake
I first heard about this Gozitan duo made up of Charles J Attard and Frank Buhagiar several months ago but I had only heard them do covers of songs written by others. Now that I've finally heard them do an original song I'm gladly including them on my weekly MMI podcast. As it happens their sound works well back to back with that from Different Strings.

Tony Scott - Soul Searching (Let it Flow)
Anyone above the age of 40 familiar with the Maltese music scene will remember Tony Scott as a prominent name in the 1980s. It's heart warming to see that he's still producing music after all these years, finding a new audience online, mostly via MySpace. He seems to be working on a new album as he has recently released a couple of new tracks on his MySpace page. This is one of them and I'm sure it will go down well with anyone who likes instrumental music of a symphonic rock variety with a tinge of new age sounds.

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 click here or listen to the podcast on the player right below this text.

Labels: MMI, podcast

Friday, April 02, 2010

April

This month six years ago I started blogging. Throughout this time I've used Blogger to enable me to publish my new posts in my personal website. For the last several months, however, I've become a WordPress user for everything but my own blog. It's time to switch.

I'm being shoved towards a faster switch by the simple fact that Blogger will no longer allow me to creat blog posts to my website in exactly the same way I've done since April 2004. I love change but I prefer it to come on my own terms.

This post goes against the experimental thought I expressed in my last blog post but I can assure you that it's only the Easter holidays that are keeping me away from embracing that idea completely.

Meanwhile here are some details about this week's podcast. I'll sort it out as soon as most people aren't able to see another figolla.

Toni Sant presents the 206th in a series of podcasts featuring music by performers in or from Malta. [in Maltese]

Artists featured in this podcast:

Christabelle Curmi
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Hooligan
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Sandro Cassar
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Tony Gauci
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>> Details about this podcast [in English]

Mużika Mod Ieħor ma' Toni Sant on Facebook

Labels: blogosphere, MMI, podcast

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Don't Know Much

As an experiment: I'm thinking of changing the format of my weekly blog entries to match the basic show note page I also create for my weekly podcast feed. I'd still like to comment on the acts I pick for each podcast, but I'm thinking that a separate entry with bloggy type entries that are not necessarily related to my podcast would be a better way to communicate those thoughts.

What you see below for the 204th MMI podcast is simply a reproduction of the regular podcast feed entry for this edition. I clearly need to give the idea I expresssed at the top of this blog post some more thought. So perhaps this is just a thought experiment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toni Sant presents the 205th in a series of podcasts featuring music by performers in or from Malta. [in Maltese]

Artists featured in this podcast:

Muxu
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Hadrian Mansueto
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Instincts
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Salt
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>> Details about this podcast [in English]