Author: Oli
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The Blackswords: Episode 4
The cabin shutters were closed, slicing the the sunlight into a gridwork of thin lines: thicker verticals at the hinges, or where the two leaves met, and fine horizontals that passed between the boards. Ashurra’s eyes traced the lines across the wall, and abruptly out, around the lean knots and…
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Cutleri – We Sink Ships (avant-folk)
I never know how much to consider the visual artwork when I’m discussing a release. On the one hand, I don’t want to do the artist a disservice by basing my description on anything extraneous to the music, but then the artwork does unavoidably affect how the listener hears the…
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Slabdragger/ Meadows – split LP (stoner metal)
The last split release I reviewed also involved Meadows. The rationale behind split releases is obviously to seek a synergy: the artists involved generally have a close stylistic affinity, or their audiences overlap, to their mutual benefit; sometimes I suspect the reason has more to do with the relationship between…
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Various Artists – Singles and EPs
Schoolday nostalgia seems to be a current in many branches of music nowadays. It’s by no means a new thing, but it’s definitely growing. It’s curious how it lends historicity and distance to times that probably don’t seem at all distant to a greybeard like me; my theory is that…
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Bright Color Vision – Carousel (metal)
The language of metal is so fragmented and diversified now that it’s hard to distinguish one sub-genre from another, and many bands build their sound as though they were filling their plates at a wedding buffet, after quite a few drinks. This is a positive tendency in my view, as…
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Marley Starskey Butler – Opposites (avant-pop)
Like all Entr’acte releases, Opposites arrives in a hermetically perfect, vacuum sealed package, simple metallic grey plastic with one colour printing in the exact same typeface and layout as the rest of their catalogue. There is something disturbing about its severity and its integrity; I have never been so reluctant…
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Various Artists – Album Roundup
Being able to afford soap is the new bling. That’s not necessarily a satirical conceit most artists would consider hanging an entire album off, let alone their group identity, but BIG $OAP MON£Y CR£W are not ‘most artists’, and that’s exactly what they do. Not that this is overtly a…
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The Blackswords: Episode 3
Umbaral rode scout to the port, handing his lance to another rider and stringing his bow; being an archer usually let him keep a safe distance from the enemy, which was why he’d specialised as one, but there were other times it when condemned him to the van. It was…
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Asgeir & Mo – Danza de Andalucia (Flamenco fusion)
Flamenco is a music that lends itself to fusions, and that has been successfully fused in many different contexts, but it is also the site of a pronounced ideology of purism. The kind of cultural essentialism that has afflicted British folk music, or the blues, is still probably still the…
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H.L.I. – Omniglyph (hip-hop)
Rap is a form of spoken language; perhaps more than any other discursive art, it has no independent existence on the page; semantics are central to its meanings, but flow and orality are its material substance. It’s interesting then, that H.L.I. have chosen to title this release in a way…
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Various Artists – Album Roundup
This is a record that gets straight down to business, a short, kinetic acoustic guitar intro prefacing a series of remarks, delivered with such visceral charisma that it almost doesn’t matter what they mean; the fact that they mean a lot imbues this music with a density that belies its…
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Coalition – In Search Of Forever (progressive rock)
I felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity when I first saw this album, but I couldn’t work out why. The first thing I thought of was Return To Forever, but that band’s album covers had very little in common with this one. It was several days before it came to…
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Dementio 13 – El Lissitzky (electronic post-rock)
Composers of electronic music, if they wish to work with a relatively accessible aesthetic, face a particular set of challenges: to avoid a sense of impersonality, to make their music feel ‘human’, to make it breathe, when it may in fact move no physical air between the moment of composition…
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Various Artists – Album Roundup
Quietness has been an important trope in avant-garde music since the days of Minimalism I guess, but it has been articulated in many ways, within a diversity of musical practices. The near inactivity to which some free improvisors have gravitated, or John Cage’s invitation to listen to the contextual ambience…
Oliver Arditi 