Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Heroically strange

    Heroically strange

    And so The Prophet concludes. What started as the ostensible re-boot of a retired and obscure superhero can take its place on the library shelves as one of the most extraordinarily inventive science-fiction comics in the English-language tradition, and hopefully as an enduring element of the canon that is being forged in this second Golden… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    It has been a long while since I reviewed any music: my life became rather full of obligations, which reduced my output and eventually halted it altogether. Between then and now I have had the chance to reflect on what had become a somewhat procedural activity, and I have reached a few decisions. From now… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Finger-picked arpeggios fall with the regularity and impersonal melancholy of rain, offset by a vocal delivery that is hesitant not in its phrasing, but in its timbre. The sound of this four-song EP is intimate, extremely close to the listener’s ear, and it is formed from the kind of performative gestures in which the proximity… Read more

  • Ashley Reaks and Joe Hakim – Cultural Thrift (dub-rock poetry)

    Ashley Reaks and Joe Hakim – Cultural Thrift (dub-rock poetry)

    Ashley Reaks has a good way with lyrics himself, but there’s a strong synergy to his collaborations with spoken word artist Joe Hakim, such as ‘I Want To Get A Celebrity Pregnant’ from Before Koresh. Hakim is a social observer, a curator of experience who speaks sometimes from a lived subjectivity, and sometimes from a… Read more

  • Darts & Arrows – Altamira (avant-jazz)

    Darts & Arrows – Altamira (avant-jazz)

    Avant-garde music (and other art) is animated by a narrative of self-definition – it is the privileged marginal, the self-marking other, whose exteriority to the mainstream is established by virtue of the trailblazer’s enhanced legitimacy, rather than its exclusion from the established sites of legitimacy. But one person’s avant-garde, obviously, is another person’s outsider art,… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    This album, originally released in 1989, was for a long time the definitive answer to the question ‘what do Thinking Plague sound like?’ It was ten years before In Extremis presented a new line-up and a changing sound to the record-buying public (sans legendary founder-member Bob Drake) – and let’s face it, bands as daring… Read more