Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • The Chewers – Dead Dads (avant-rock)

    The Chewers – Dead Dads (avant-rock)

    Sections of rock’s avant-garde feel the need to dress themselves in the armour of technical facility, and indeed some of its practitioners are instrumental virtuosi who base their practice on complexity and sophisticated musical structures. Not The Chewers, who are somewhere to the left of even bands like Sonic Youth or Melvins, in terms of… Read more

  • Dropout Patrol – Sunny Hill (art-pop)

    Dropout Patrol – Sunny Hill (art-pop)

    ‘Literate’ is a term that some might use to characterise Dropout Patrol, and ‘erudite’ is another: neither is really up to the task. Sunny Hill is not a literate record in the sense of being wordy, or more concerned with meaning than feeling, and neither is its erudition of the obvious sort, presenting a succession… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    ‘Let it be known’, begins the declamation with which Damon Locks opens the first of these two live sets: the immense complexity of the knowing we are invited to share soon becomes apparent. I come across a huge variety of music, much of it extremely creative, inventive, accomplished and unconventional, but rarely do I encounter… Read more

  • Roland Bühlmann – Aineo (progressive rock)

    Roland Bühlmann – Aineo (progressive rock)

    There is a minimal aesthetic to Aineo, but its compositions are structured hierarchically, not by any remotely Minimalist procedure. It’s an instrumental record, with cool, low-key textures, that, for the most part, can be uncontroversially classified as rock – a few folky moments notwithstanding. Everything about it conforms to established norms that say, roughly, each… Read more

  • Ashley Reaks – Before Koresh (avant-rock)

    Ashley Reaks – Before Koresh (avant-rock)

    Ashley Reaks speaks from outside. His work is most obviously ‘outsider art’ if you look at his visual work, rather than his music: his collage-based pieces, deliberately ugly as they are (although they are often richly and decoratively patterned), with their disturbing, and frequently sexually explicit iconography, position themselves unequivocally away from the mainstream, far… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Chris Saunders has released several more albums under the Interceptor rubric since he sent me this one, but he hasn’t submitted them for review, presumably because it’s taken me so long to get to this! I haven’t heard those yet, and this is old news now, but Angel In The Red Room is the first… Read more