Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Soundly conserved (with prawns on)

    Soundly conserved (with prawns on)

    I have a bugbear, in relation to museums that collect musical instruments. They are often treated as pieces of furniture or objets d’art, conserved to preserve their appearance and physical integrity, without conserving their sound production capacities. In my opinion, this misses the point entirely. You wouldn’t conserve a painting simply to arrest its deterioration,… Read more

  • Led by the hand

    Led by the hand

    Pete Grogan – sax; Chris Williams – sax, effects; Liran Donin – b, effects; Mark Holub – d Led Bib have been around roughly as long as this millennium, ploughing their own furrow through the rich tilth of contemporary acoustic jazz. Their particular approach (and there are now nearly as many approaches as practitioners) takes… Read more

  • Tension, irony and the collapse of civilisation

    Tension, irony and the collapse of civilisation

    Colonel Pyat is a character who crops up from time to time in Michael Moorcock’s formally experimental Cornelius Quartet, although if I’m honest I don’t recall much about him from those books. He just seems to be around, one of a shifting cast of multiverse travellers that are sometimes the allies and sometimes the adversaries… Read more

  • Beneath the surface

    Beneath the surface

    Gwen John is an artist I knew very little, other than a couple of her most iconic pieces. I knew she was Augustus John’s sister, undeservingly in his shadow for much of the time since their deaths, and I knew that Augustus John was a bohemian who wore big floppy hats and hung out with… Read more

  • Rare fusion

    Rare fusion

    Macanese cuisine is not something you’re likely to have had, unless you’ve been to Macau. It’s not even common in Lisbon, apparently, despite its status as a Portuguese fusion cuisine from a very long-standing colony. But Edinburgh is a city with a lot of interesting restaurants, and a ready audience for the nooks and crannies… Read more

  • Super-sized signature sandwich

    Super-sized signature sandwich

    Ambling with Spouse and Spawn through Stockbridge in Edinburgh, a picturesque neighbourhood of exquisitely groomed small dogs, charity shops selling collectible vinyl and purveyors of traditional limewash in custom tints, we stopped for lunch at Mootz General Store, which is not a general store. It’s a sandwich shop with a pretty straightforward premise. They bake… Read more