Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Worlds collide in Dementio 13’s latest release, albeit without the biblical histrionics and cataclysmic consequences that usually dance attendance on such events in fiction. There has always been more to Dementio 13 than the electronica with which he has populated his records, and he has always been a musician of unusual erudition, drawing his language… Read more

  • Brooke Sharkey – One Dress (folk)

    Brooke Sharkey – One Dress (folk)

    It can be quite hard to find your place as a singer-songwriter; it’s an idiom whose audience mainly appreciates acoustic music, and mainly doesn’t appreciate anything too weird. Its audience also has a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for frankly indistinguishable assemblages of strummed steel-string guitar and predictable vocal melodies; it’s asking an awful lot of vocal… Read more

  • Guapo – History Of The Visitation (avant-rock)

    Guapo – History Of The Visitation (avant-rock)

    Guapo is a band with some form; since 1995 they have released a fistful of EPs and nine albums, and although the line-up and sound have changed considerably over that time, the name has been attached to music that shows a consistent and determined belief in the value of creative exploration. This music is progressive;… Read more

  • Monday Musing: If Property Is Theft, Who Stole Our Music?

    Monday Musing: If Property Is Theft, Who Stole Our Music?

    Meaningful utterances can be represented in physical form: a spoken sentence may be represented symbolically by writing, or mimetically, by an audio recording. Such representations may be reproduced indefinitely, whether by a symbolic process (someone reads the words and writes them down again) or a mimetic one (someone makes a photocopy of the writing). Each… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Positive vibes abound on this perfectly formed EP produced by the estimable Rich Huxley, whose main gig Hope And Social sits in exactly the same affective territory; clear-sighted optimism is the order of the day, and because the songs are notably lacking in trite sentiment or spurious closure the effect is genuinely uplifting. The musical… Read more

  • Tom Slatter – Three Rows Of Teeth (avant-prog)

    Tom Slatter – Three Rows Of Teeth (avant-prog)

    Tom Slatter likes steampunk; he likes it enough to have used it as the thematic touchstone for all three of his albums to date. Now steampunk is not a musical style (Abney Park notwithstanding) but a genre of fiction, and a large body of visual culture derived from it. If you want a watertight definition… Read more