Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • 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

  • Believers Roast presents The Exquisite Corpse Game

    Believers Roast presents The Exquisite Corpse Game

    The game of Consequences has a long history, probably in the order of two centuries, but quite possibly longer. Back when parlour games were essential lubricants to the passage of time, a progress not demarcated by the dazzling increments of the media age, such diversions had a far more prominent role in culture, and could… Read more

  • Dementio 13 – Imperial Decimal (electronica)

    Dementio 13 – Imperial Decimal (electronica)

    Historically, the music released under the Dementio 13 aegis has been sufficiently consistent to sound like the work of a single project, but it has also developed and evolved in quite striking ways. The earlier work had a more signally electronic sound, and although it involved some remarkable explorations of texture, was notable more for… Read more