Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Monday Musing: Musical Experience and And The Location Of Meaning

    Monday Musing: Musical Experience and And The Location Of Meaning

    I often mention in the reviews I write, that I locate musical meaning in the experience of listening. This is in contrast to linguistic meanings, which are located somewhere other than the sound of the language, which points you at ideas to which it is only arbitrarily connected. This can be a difficult thing to… Read more

  • Neil Cousin – Bonfire (folksong/ roots rock)

    Neil Cousin – Bonfire (folksong/ roots rock)

    Specifics are important. Little details are the warp and weft of life. Neil Cousin knows this: he knows that a hole in a jumper, a night-time swim in the sea, a man with painted toenails and hair worn in plaits are all important. Not important as in important to someone, or important in respect of… Read more

  • Pam Shaffer – As We Are (popular song)

    Pam Shaffer – As We Are (popular song)

    ‘Literary’ is an adjective customarily applied to works of popular music when their lyrics use words of more than two syllables, or when they attempt to convey meanings more sophisticated than ‘I like your tits, lets dance.’ Sometimes it’s warranted, when the music adopts discursive strategies that bear some similarity to those more often found… Read more

  • Monday Musings: Your Local Scene Is A Weapon

    Monday Musings: Your Local Scene Is A Weapon

    On Saturday I went to RoastFest, a beautiful extravaganza of creative and utterly idiosyncratic music, all independent or unsigned, all uncompromisingly true to its various muses, and all performed for the sheer love of it (free entry to eight hours of music, including some acts who are pretty well known in their field). To see… Read more

  • Northern Oak – Monuments (folk metal)

    Northern Oak – Monuments (folk metal)

    Fusions are fickle things. Some that seem initially fruitful quickly date, sounding to ears beyond their immediate time and place of production like one thing stuck to another thing; others seek a level at which whatever edge their parent styles possess is lost in the anodyne mush of a lowest common denominator. Folk and metal… Read more

  • Dialect – Laygate Hallways: unreleased 2001-2006 (hip-hop)

    Dialect – Laygate Hallways: unreleased 2001-2006 (hip-hop)

    It seems that Dialect have been around for a good while. Even if you’ve never done anything (or nobody’s noticed you doing anything), just being in existence for long enough to release an album of early rarities is something of an achievement. I should like to point out that I’m in possession of some earlier… Read more