Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Monday Musing: Special Pleading And The Ethics Of Culture

    Monday Musing: Special Pleading And The Ethics Of Culture

    Every so often the liberal press likes to get up a nice bit of moral panic about ragga/ rap/ whatever singers’ appalling attitudes towards women, or exhorting their listeners to shoot gays; usually the right wing press likes to join in as well, as it’s a good excuse for them to trot out their ongoing… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    A thin-sounding electric guitar (maybe a Telecaster), an electric piano, filtered through the glitchy sound of dusty vinyl, and looped in incomplete gestures that sound like a needle jumping. It’s the sound of nostalgia, the sound of distance from a desired space that the imagination is better equipped to apprehend than the senses. The uppercut… Read more

  • Sven Kacirek – The Kenya Sessions (world music)

    Sven Kacirek – The Kenya Sessions (world music)

    Altin Village & Mine will shortly (at the time of writing) be releasing The Kenya Sessions as a vinyl album, but they will be doing so about a year after its original CD and MP3 release on Pingipung, which gives me a welcome excuse to cover a recording that managed to pass me by on… Read more

  • Dementio 13 – Crash St (electronic post-rock)

    Dementio 13 – Crash St (electronic post-rock)

    Our statements have meanings only inasmuch as they indicate distinctions or differences. Words, and other meaningful gestures, draw lines around pieces of our conceptual universe, and say ‘x means y because it doesn’t mean z’. A piece of music that sounds very similar to another, has a very similar meaning; in the context of a… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    There’s more than a nod to dreampop and shoegaze in this music, but Lisa Masia and Marina Cristofalo are clearly too in love with the raw and ragged sound of a distorted electric guitar to tame it to the extent that might imply. Some of Wish You Were A Pony is downright heavy! This is… Read more

  • Monday Musing: Listening Communities And DIY Culture

    Monday Musing: Listening Communities And DIY Culture

    My last Monday Musing was on the topic of music scenes; this time it’s on a closely related theme. Just as there are social networks of musical production and consumption (a confusing multitude of inter-related networks), so there are networks of cultural practice that contextualise our listening. It’s apparent to anyone who takes an interest… Read more