Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    The green, pastoral idyll of the English national myth, the archetype of England that is reputed to ramble gently through the rolling downs and valleys of a harmonious rustic hinterland, is bollocks. The countryside in which it is supposed to be found is not a place with which the majority of the English are very… Read more

  • Melanin 9 – Magna Carta (hip-hop)

    Melanin 9 – Magna Carta (hip-hop)

    It winds me up somewhat, on occasions like National Poetry Day, or in public discussions about poetry among the mandarins of the cultural elite, that the richest, most diverse and thriving field of poetic endeavour is more or less completely ignored. The academy thinks it owns the word ‘music’, and qualifiers such as ‘popular’ or… Read more

  • Goya – Demo (stoner metal)

    Goya – Demo (stoner metal)

    Drugs. Weed, hash, blow, smoke, tea, skunk, green, charas, gear, pollen, bud, sensemilla, kif, oil, dope, black, pot, marijuana, cannabis. I don’t wish to imply that Goya’s music is one-dimensional, but this is very clearly the central inspiration for their creative activities. So much so, that their Bandcamp page is simply addressed with the name… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    If you describe Tamara Parsons-Baker’s practice as a formula, it doesn’t inspire much excitement: simple, mainly diatonic guitar strums; emotive vocals; songs about unsuccessful love affairs; we have heard these elements before. However, the five songs on Lover proceed from a somewhat more warped perspective than this formula might suggest, lurking with mischief aforethought behind… Read more

  • Isamu McGregor – Live At The Baked Potato (jazz)

    Isamu McGregor – Live At The Baked Potato (jazz)

    Jazz fusion, after the initial excitement attending its arrival, organised itself into two broad sets of practices: one organised musical materials drawn from various forms of popular music, embracing new musical technologies, with the harmonic erudition of jazz, into complex, highly organised arrangements; the other really just carried on doing jazz, but did so with… Read more

  • Thumpermonkey – Sleep Furiously (progressive rock)

    Thumpermonkey – Sleep Furiously (progressive rock)

    Injunctions to sleep in a particular manner crop up from time to time as album titles. Hope & Social’s last album length release was called Sleep Sound, which is perhaps the kind of sleeping to which most of us are accustomed; either that or badly. Furiously is another matter altogether: normally, a high fever is… Read more