Here's a little something that arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. It's not exactly a local product, but there is a connection by way of a certain Daniel Talma, whose name will certainly ring familiar with a good number of Maltese bands and artists who have stepped into a recording studio.
Some years ago Talma, who is based locally, had also launched the ambitious BeMixed project with ex-Fellowfish drummer Christophe Ladret. That project eventually folded in 2013, but it did yield A Transatlantic Pact, an album's worth of internationally-collated tracks which I'm sure some of you will find quite intriguing.
More recently, in between working on other projects, Talma was also involved in an interesting project by the name of Unheard Music Concepts. If the name sounds unusual, that's because it fronts an equally leftfield collection of recordings . The official statement describes the end result as "purely improvised instrumental music - a mixture of jazz, classical and minimal music with a touch of electronics", which is all true, but I would venture to add the terms abstract and fluid; the kind of music one sinks into more effectively in private.
"The album, which is titled Harbour, was recorded in the Netherlands with Dutch musicians Han Post and Marc Verhoeven", Talma said in a comment, adding that the three of them decided to go back to the core of all music: communication. "We would just meet and play, without any predetermined chords, tempo or anything else" he explained. "It was all about listening to and interacting with each other". The music was recorded on a four-track recorder, with the best pieces then picked out and mixed. "The 18 tracks appear in the same order as they were first played".