Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • ::M∆DE:IN:HEIGHTS:: – APORIA: IN THESE §TREETS (electronica)

    ::M∆DE:IN:HEIGHTS:: – APORIA: IN THESE §TREETS (electronica)

    It has become something of a cliché to describe a vocalist as ‘using their voice like an instrument’. It’s usually intended as a compliment, but it’s a pretty much empty statement, or even a self-contradictory one. After all, in music, whatever is used to produce sound is an instrument, and we don’t gain much by… Read more

  • Melted Cassettes – The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings (electronic noise rock)

    Melted Cassettes – The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings (electronic noise rock)

    Apparently (I read in the press release, in a rare fit of journalistic research) The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings refers to a project to record the sound of deep plate tectonics, which is rumoured to have accidentally recorded Hell. I would imagine that plate tectonics sound a lot lower and slower than this, and… Read more

  • olds sleeper – plainspoken (folk/ Americana)

    olds sleeper – plainspoken (folk/ Americana)

    I get a lot of visual clichés when I listen to this album. I get sunset, Mr. sleeper’s weatherbeaten face, eyes hidden by the brim of his hat, battered boots on the rail of the porch as he plays, wonky rows of telegraph poles marching off across a flat, parched landscape. I get dust: dust… Read more

  • The Bandana Splits (retro pop)

    The Bandana Splits (retro pop)

    It seems to be an automatic attribution nowadays to describe any use of a historically located pop-cultural style as ‘ironic’. I caught myself on the verge of unreflectingly starting off about The Bandana Splits’ ‘ironic appropriation of 1950s pop tropes’ or some such bollocks, and then I thought, actually what’s so ironic about it? I… Read more

  • Monday Musings: Death of a Simplicity Geek

    Monday Musings: Death of a Simplicity Geek

    I’ve decided to devote this edition of Monday Musings to talking about Steve Jobs. You may wonder what a recently deceased technology corporation executive has to do with the sort of things I usually write about, other than iTunes, obviously. The short answer is that I’m not too sure, but I felt the need to… Read more

  • Saturday Summary 024

    Saturday Summary 024

    Two deaths loom large this week. The first is of a seminal figure in the history of the acoustic steel string guitar, folk innovator Bert Jansch. First coming to widespread attention as a part of folk/ jazz fusion pioneers Pentangle, his playing was influential on more than one generation of guitarists, starting with his contemporaries… Read more