Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Monday Musing: Eclectic Taste and Artistic Truth

    Monday Musing: Eclectic Taste and Artistic Truth

    I’m decidedly omnivorous in my musical tastes; if you read my blog regularly, you know this. If not, a quick glance at the genres of the music I’ve reviewed in the past few months should confirm it pretty rapidly. Taste, however, is a matter of discrimination, of distinguishing one thing from another, and if I… Read more

  • Olds Sleeper – New Year’s Poem (avant-country/ noise-folk)

    Olds Sleeper – New Year’s Poem (avant-country/ noise-folk)

    This is a recording with a self-consciously ‘lo-fi’ sound, but there’s a whole sonic ideology wrapped up in an idea like ‘lo-fi’. What does it even mean? Low fidelity; and fidelity means truth. I would guess though, that it’s a primary concern of Olds Sleeper’s to get the truth quotient of his music right up… Read more

  • She Makes War – Little Battles (gloom-pop)

    She Makes War – Little Battles (gloom-pop)

    I’ve been waiting with some considerable bating of breath for this album to come along. The first She Makes War full-length was a real revelation for me: accessible, guitar-based music, founded on traditional songwriting virtues, that hits the sweet spot aspired to by writers of prose fiction, and articulates characters whose experiences chime with the… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Glockamole is a great name for a comedy hip-hop record. There’s clearly a lot of wordplay left in ripping the piss out of hip-hop’s tropes and clichés, but I have to say there are probably not many jokes left in it. It’s a well worked mine, especially gangsta rap, bearing in mind that everything N.W.A.… Read more

  • Army of 2600 – Return Of The Bloop Beep Buzz (chiptune/ noise)

    Army of 2600 – Return Of The Bloop Beep Buzz (chiptune/ noise)

    Chiptune purists may stick exclusively to using sounds as they are synthesised by their chosen platform, but there’s a well established set of musical practices that take the sounds of a Gameboy, an Amiga, or, in this case, an Atari 2600, and liberally mash them up. Mike Bourque likes to slather distortion over his sounds,… Read more

  • Goosepimp Orchestra – Swagadelic Fertilizer Castle (funk/ latin/ jam-band)

    Goosepimp Orchestra – Swagadelic Fertilizer Castle (funk/ latin/ jam-band)

    Music has many functions, central among which is entertainment. For all that fans of its more abstruse, intellectual forms might claim otherwise, I would argue that it’s a central function of all music; the stuff that seems self-consciously serious, or which adopts a texture at odds with conventional notions of the aesthetic, is still entertainment,… Read more