Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Astralfish – Far Corners (space rock)

    Astralfish – Far Corners (space rock)

    Labeling this record as ‘space rock’, as I have above, is a bit like an American telling you that they’re Italian, or Polish or Armenian. I don’t have to write anything after the title, and I’m never trying to ascribe any particular set of characteristics when I do so, but it serves as a useful… Read more

  • The Blackswords: Episode 1

    The Blackswords: Episode 1

    Irtain could smell burning, and hear the rumble of a crowd at war. It wasn’t so much the clash of arms, although there was that as well, muted and intermittent, but the sound of many voices; he had survived enough battles to know the difference between the note of a market, or an angry mob,… Read more

  • Kylie Minoise – Die Yuppie Scum! Love Quest Ov Sick Shock Disco Destroyer! (noise)

    Kylie Minoise – Die Yuppie Scum! Love Quest Ov Sick Shock Disco Destroyer! (noise)

    Noise, and the way it is employed in music, invites a whole array of speculations on the coherence and incoherence of communicative acts, and of the relationship between the meaningful and the meaningless, the carrier signal and the message, the form and the content. The word ‘noise’ is frequently used to label irrelevance, the continual… Read more

  • Adrian May at The Open Road Bookshop, Stoke-by-Nayland (poetry/ acoustic song)

    Adrian May at The Open Road Bookshop, Stoke-by-Nayland (poetry/ acoustic song)

    As I seem to be writing about live events again, and I just happen to have been to one in my very own village, at my very good friend Dave Charleston’s bookshop, it would seem churlishly remiss of me to ignore it — not to mention hypocritical, given my vocal public stance on localism… Since… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    This track, this EP, is a remix in one continuous utterance of the Hanetration EP Tenth Oar which I reviewed in my last roundup of short releases. Tenth Oar was divided into four tracks, while the Barren Waste EP I reviewed in the same roundup was called A unified idea split into meaningless pieces, which… Read more

  • POST-EASTER MADNESS!!! at the Northcroft Social Club, Sudbury (rock)

    POST-EASTER MADNESS!!! at the Northcroft Social Club, Sudbury (rock)

    It’s very nearly a year since I last wrote a live review, mainly because I find them disproportionately time consuming, but I’ve decided to lighten up a bit, and start doing them again, with a less obsessive approach to the whole thing. Also Paul Rhodes keeps smiling sweetly and asking me politely, so I felt… Read more