Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • 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

  • Tom DePlonty – Blake Pieces (experimental)

    Tom DePlonty – Blake Pieces (experimental)

    The music on this album is inspired very specifically by William Blake’s The Book of Urizen, but not in a programmatic sense. The short pieces that make up the suite ‘do not represent the content of the poem literally or symbolically’, Tom De Plonty tells us on his website, and they require or assume no… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Wayne Myers, singer, songwriter and principal instrumental culprit, sent me this mini-album in early February according to my records, but it somehow slipped through the net and never got reviewed. Well, better late than never. Sleeping Beauty is pure poetry. I intend that as a value judgement, but also a literal description; Myers is a… Read more

  • Ashley Reaks – Compassion Fatigue (1-8) (avant-prog)

    Ashley Reaks – Compassion Fatigue (1-8) (avant-prog)

    ‘Concept’ albums have been a mixed blessing on the history of rock music. The idea that an album might have some connecting theme running through the various songs collected on it has been a controversial one, bitterly opposed at times by those with a strong doctrinal commitment to a particular model of popular music, and… Read more