Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Karen Grace – Bitter Sweet (avant-folk)

    Karen Grace – Bitter Sweet (avant-folk)

    I’m sure that Karen Grace thinks she’s just writing songs about the things that matter to her, and recording them in the way that suits them best. There’s a whole world of acoustic singer-songwriters out there, all doing that, and a frightening number of them do it really well. Doing it really well is not… Read more

  • Die Goldenen Zitronen – Flogging A Dead Frog (art-punk)

    Die Goldenen Zitronen – Flogging A Dead Frog (art-punk)

    Formed at the inception of what would come to be known as the Hamburger Schule (from which they vehemently distance themselves), Die Goldenen Zitronen had their beginnings as an identifiably punk band, but a commitment to creative, aesthetic and political rigour has led them to a variety of stylistic positions, some quite avant-garde. Entertainment might… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Abject and lonesome mid-fi folk, that drifts across the field of consciousness like a progession of washed-out, dusty photographs, before it becomes quite heavy and ominous towards the end of the album, and finishes with an unlikely cover of ‘Twerk’. One of Uhlich’s Bandcamp tags is ‘devotional’, and there is a sense of outsider ritual… Read more

  • Opposite Day – Space Taste Race, Pt. 2 (progressive rock)

    Opposite Day – Space Taste Race, Pt. 2 (progressive rock)

    The ‘progressive’ is a quietly contested quality in rock music. There’s a great deal of music that can be accurately described as such, a small subset of which can be categorised stylistically as ‘progressive rock’. A smaller subset of music that is ‘progressive rock’ in style could also be described as progressive in character. There… Read more

  • Hobopope and the Goldfish Cathedral – Grunt Gullet Pogrom (pronk)

    Hobopope and the Goldfish Cathedral – Grunt Gullet Pogrom (pronk)

    It’s tempting to say that the Hobopope project hasn’t been well documented enough, but I think I’m just saying that I wish Paul David Rhodes would write and record some more songs. This release, from a few years ago, brings together pretty much all the material that I’ve heard, in versions that I think can… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Richard Wileman seems to be going through a particularly fertile patch of late, putting out releases somewhat faster than I can write about them (and the day he puts out something I don’t write about will be a long time coming). After the vigorous collaborative chops-fest (I simplify unfairly) of Strange Relations comes this short… Read more