Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Straw Bear – Black Bank (folk-pop-rock)

    Straw Bear – Black Bank (folk-pop-rock)

    Songwriters are faced with a number of choices, regarding the weighting of significance towards the different parts of their practice. Many or most of those that might be described as singer-songwriters signal their emphasis on writing rather than performance, or on non-verbal aspects of composition, by ensuring that the ‘music’ doesn’t draw attention to itself.… Read more

  • There Is No Teenage Love – There Is No Teenage Love (ambient/ drone)

    There Is No Teenage Love – There Is No Teenage Love (ambient/ drone)

    This album is enigmatic from the start, or even earlier in fact. Who is this skinny, elfin featured, uncomfortably hunched girl with smoke in her mouth and a triangle drawn on her sternum? What do they mean by saying ‘there is no teenage love’? As a statement, it is true in some senses, and untrue… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    As far as I know Dialect are no longer an active collective, although its members continue to release razor sharp and uncompromisingly independent hip-hop on their own account; they have released a lot of great music, and are clearly a mainstay of hip-hop in the Northeast, and this is the second album of unreleased tracks… Read more

  • The Blackswords: Episode 5

    The Blackswords: Episode 5

    The dice were not favouring Rajir. He looked at yet another fistful of ones, twos and threes, taunting him from the table, and threw a handful of coppers at them, standing. ‘I’ve had enough of this, you whoresons,’ he grumbled. ‘Your luck could change at any moment, sir,’ said Falcon, the new recruit, his black… Read more

  • Mere – Mere (dark-ambient improvisation)

    Mere – Mere (dark-ambient improvisation)

    Improvisation is a complex matter, and often a contentious one: some degree of musical freedom is usually identified with it, to the extent that freedom is sometimes regarded as its defining characteristic, its essence, or indeed as the thing itself. Thus some more partisan free improvisers would not really regard formulaic improvisation (improvisation within closely… Read more

  • Jumble Hole Clough – Three Bags Of Madder (ambient)

    Jumble Hole Clough – Three Bags Of Madder (ambient)

    Relating music to place can be a tricky business: music, after all, is a non-denotational language, or if it denotes anything, it denotes itself. Of course there are specific associations related to recognisable phrases or sounds, and music often involves verbal elements which can point our aural responses in a desired direction, but the sounds… Read more