Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Review Of The Year 2014: 20 Albums

    Review Of The Year 2014: 20 Albums

    My views on end-of-year roundups in general are quite aggressive, and can be read at greater length in the introduction to last year’s selection, here. Suffice it to say that I think anyone claiming to know which are the best few albums released in any given year is seriously delusional; my selection is simply some… Read more

  • Bitter Fruit – It Gets Worse (noise rock)

    Bitter Fruit – It Gets Worse (noise rock)

    This bunch of raucous, abrasive noise-mongers from Oakland CA specifically describe their music as ‘queer death rock’. That raises a couple of issues as a genre label. The first is that given that the sound of this record is something that makes sense in an established set of musical practices, what is it about the… Read more

  • Regal Worm – Neither Use Nor Ornament (avant-prog)

    Regal Worm – Neither Use Nor Ornament (avant-prog)

    ‘A small collection of big suites’ is the sub-title applied to this ‘mini-album’; I can’t concur with either characterisation. Taken as a single work in several movements (it’s really two long suites with three short pieces as an entr’acte) this would be, at forty-six minutes, a respectable length for a Classical symphony. In other words,… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Idiom, style and musical history are important to all of the releases in this roundup, but to none more than to Gorgeous. To Ben Walker the question of style is one to be asked in respect of every song, in the same way as key and tempo, and one that should be answered with the… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    This is a selection of records that I’d like to review, but for one reason or another, it’s not going to happen. Some (in fact most) of them just didn’t quite make the cut, in light of the extremely high standard and preponderance of physical submissions I get now (these were all received as digital… Read more

  • The Grip – Celebrate (jazz)

    The Grip – Celebrate (jazz)

    This band make a sound with a great big gaping hole right through the middle of it. Conceptually, jazz has been (among other things) about the relationship between single lines and harmony, for a considerable number of decades – perhaps this became an overriding concern with the advent of be-bop, when harmonic complexity increased concurrently… Read more