Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • The Stargazer’s Assistant – Mirrors & Tides, Shivers & Voids (dark ambient)

    The Stargazer’s Assistant – Mirrors & Tides, Shivers & Voids (dark ambient)

    There’s no easy categorisation for this music, no recognisable stylistic tag that readily contains it, but it evinces a coherent, clearly-stated set of aesthetic and creative values, an imagistic approach to the making of musical statements, that produces much the same clarity and precision of expression that can be found by working inside an established… Read more

  • Tom DePlonty – Music for Michael Skrtic (experimental)

    Tom DePlonty – Music for Michael Skrtic (experimental)

    The artist Michael Skrtic is not someone I know anything about, but his cover for this album of music dedicated to him is certainly an extraordinary piece of work. References to the man are few in cyberspace, but he is the co-author of a book entitled Selections from the Dream Manual: An Aesthetic Grimoire and… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Cassette mushes everything up and squeezes it together; on top of the warm, lush distortions naturally imparted by magnetic tape, the whole stereo recording is crammed onto half of a tape less than four millimeters wide. It takes some clever mastering to get a really spacious, clearly separated soundfield, but if what you want is… Read more

  • Peacemaker – Cult .45 (doom)

    Peacemaker – Cult .45 (doom)

    This album comes from a band that situates itself in the tradition of doom metal quite deliberately, and with some self-awareness. By this I mean that they’ve thought about the meanings of the music they love, and precisely how they are produced in that music, and set out intentionally to share more meanings from the… Read more

  • Karda Estra – Mondo Profondo/ New Worlds (avant-prog)

    Karda Estra – Mondo Profondo/ New Worlds (avant-prog)

    It’s far from unusual for me to beaten to the scoop on the music I’m sent to review, for various reasons, but not least because I like to spend a good deal of quality listening time trying to get inside the music before I set dactyls to chiclets and start spouting off. Little surprise, then,… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    We’ve all seen some pretty rough justice in the wake of global capitalism’s recent crises, but Greece has suffered worse than any other part of the developed world. The Figures Of Enormous Grey And The Patterns Of Fraud appears to be a response to these circumstances, although it’s too complex an album to be pinned… Read more