Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Rigorously nourishing

    Rigorously nourishing

    This album was a gift from a friend, who I imagine had it recommended to him for its prog connections, but found it a bit too spicy when it arrived. I had it hanging around for several years before I gave it a really deep listening, but now I have… wow. Centipede were a fairly Read more

  • Getting off the train

    Getting off the train

    One of the books that has made the greatest impact on me is Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. In that tetralogy the protagonist pledges his allegiance to a rebel leader, and after an epic series of adventures finds himself face-to-face with the authority against which he is rebelling—at which point it is revealed Read more

  • Expert hand-holding

    Expert hand-holding

    Worldbuilder, storyteller—these are Philip Pullman’s great strengths for me. As a ‘novel-maker’ he’s stuck in a rather old-fashioned, comfortable mode which doesn’t respond well to an overly critical reading, and as a philosopher (which all but the most unreflective authors of speculative fiction must be) he has some blind spots. The delicious pleasure of a Read more

  • Writing history

    Writing history

    History is what we write about our past—it’s the origin story a culture constructs for itself, from a variety of sources and through a variety of media. With Mangrove, from his Small Axe series of films, Steve McQueen is writing history, as much as he is filming historical fiction. Although Black Power struggles have been Read more

  • Blandgorgeousartsampler

    Blandgorgeousartsampler

    It’s common for a bunch of artists to collaborate on a series, but Madi (as far as I know) has only been published as a single album, and the different contributors are deployed to produce aspects of the book’s formal structure, rather than simply taking it in turns to draw instalments or chapters. It’s the Read more

  • Shiny dance machine

    Shiny dance machine

    It was the 1980s. We all had glossy hair, wore shoulder pads, and made music with the same three models of FM synthesiser. Style was substance and everything was shiny. African musicians were beginning to make an impact on global record sales, and France was starting to be known as the place they went to Read more