Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Too moderately paced to really signify as dance music, the opening track of this EP is, nevertheless, hella heavy. Building on accumulating layers of atmosphere, when its brutalist bass hook and simple kick pattern enter, it hits with an ominous compulsion as dark and deep as doom metal. It’s not all darkness though: the track… Read more

  • Barren Waste – NSE (ambient)

    Barren Waste – NSE (ambient)

    Barren Waste are a band of many guises. They first came to my attention as a metal band with a raw and uncompromising attitude to noise, and a willingness to explore harsh frequencies and creative dissonance, rather than slipping easily into the language of sludge or grindcore. They also, as witnessed by this album, have… Read more

  • Heidi Harris – All Fall Down (freak folk)

    Heidi Harris – All Fall Down (freak folk)

    The way this album is presented, you’d think it was a more or less random bundle of artistic detritus, a set of oddments that didn’t fit anywhere else, of interest mainly to hardcore fans and completists. ‘Collaborations, new recordings, song sketches and 2 videos’ is the promise made on the Bandcamp page. Why then does… Read more

  • Monday Musing: Is Art Political Again?

    Monday Musing: Is Art Political Again?

    The more I write about different things, musical aesthetics, the music business, music industry politics, culture and all the rest of it, the less I feel like I’m writing about different things. It’s only when I take a step back that I can see how abstruse and theoretical some of the things I say about… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    If you want to you can put your own rap to this beat, you can slip your own beat beneath the words, or you can chop both into a stew of your own devising. From my perspective, as a reviewer, the habit of packaging a single with its bare beat and an a cappella is… Read more

  • Karda Estra – Weird Tales (chamber prog-psych)

    Karda Estra – Weird Tales (chamber prog-psych)

    Karda Estra occupies a fairly unique territory, not a million miles from what Gunther Schuller coined the term ‘Third Stream’ to describe, although, notwithstanding some audible nods toward its harmonic verticality, jazz is not the main constituent of its language. It’s rare that I find myself writing about music where the musicianship is as purposely… Read more