Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Monday Musing: The Aesthetics Of Nature, And The Nature Of Music

    Monday Musing: The Aesthetics Of Nature, And The Nature Of Music

    Every human being is a unique individual, and inherently valuable; what’s precious about them, moreover, is somehow connected to their uniqueness, their particularity. Trees, on the other hand… well, one’s much the same as another. Agree or disagree with these statements, there are certainly a lot of people who subscribe to both, but today I’m… Read more

  • Verbal Terrorists – The War On Terra (hip-hop)

    Verbal Terrorists – The War On Terra (hip-hop)

    Political music takes many forms. Music that subverts conventional aesthetics can be political without any overtly political content, because it calls into question a hegemonic ideology that is as much a mechanism of control as any law. Widespread notions of musical ‘quality’ serve to keep musical production and activity in the hands of an elite… Read more

  • Churn Milk Joan – One (avant-funk)

    Churn Milk Joan – One (avant-funk)

    It’s very hard to know where to start talking about this record. Do I begin by describing its sound? The words I would use would have a hard job to distinguish these sounds from other, entirely less interesting music. I could tell you that it sounds like some kind of funk, but that might give… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    It’s a hard lesson to learn, when you realise you’re not likely to hit the big time with your art, and you’ve already invested so much, with so little to show for it in material terms… it certainly can make you feel like an underachiever. Ben Black seems to conflate his focus on his work… Read more

  • 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