Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • The Ruby Kid & Dan Angell – Maps (rap/ poetry)

    The Ruby Kid & Dan Angell – Maps (rap/ poetry)

    Poetry isn’t the same thing as lyrics; lyrics are not poetry; and rap is neither poetry nor song lyrics. All of these things have their own uses, their own conventions and their own needs. You can take a beautiful example of one, you can use it as the other, and it’s most likely to end… Read more

  • Review Of The Year 2011: 12 Albums

    Review Of The Year 2011: 12 Albums

    It’s a very hard thing, to pick just a dozen albums from a year in which I have encountered so much fantastic new music (as well as a fair selection of dull, derivative or otherwise uninspiring stuff, naming no names). The number itself is entirely arbitrary, but I feel the selection needs to be at… Read more

  • The Inner Road – Visions (progressive rock)

    The Inner Road – Visions (progressive rock)

    Rock music is such an integral part of our audio culture that it has almost become invisible as a thing in itself: it doesn’t sound like rock music to many ears, in many contexts, but just like music. Furthermore, because of the way in which it is usually experienced, as a currency of mass culture,… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles & EPs

    Various Artists – Singles & EPs

    I’m not sure what Marie Craven is sorry about. Without overcoming my innate laziness and conducting a proper analysis of the lyrics, it’s hard to say whether she’s expressing regret, making an apology, or meditating on the nature of transgression. In fact the title is a little ambiguous itself: does it refer to a transcendence… Read more

  • Dementio13 – The Hobbyist (electronic post-rock)

    Dementio13 – The Hobbyist (electronic post-rock)

    ‘Style’ is frequently contested territory in popular music. Widely circulating ideas of authenticity have it that for a creative musician to think about style is to privilege the superficial surface of their work over the deep substance. Musicians are supposed to just be ‘true to themselves’, and the music that comes out will come out,… Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Heavy rock music of various sorts has a long standing relationship with the avant-garde, and the more ‘serious’ end of ‘popular’ music (I may put a lot of ‘things’ in quote marks, but it’s not my ‘fault’ if every term in ‘music’ means something other than its ‘literal’ definition!). Metal’s most fertile ongoing point of… Read more