Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Ed Ache presents The Vogon Poetry Sessions – Work For Tesco Or Die (punk/ acoustic)

    Ed Ache presents The Vogon Poetry Sessions – Work For Tesco Or Die (punk/ acoustic)

    Brace yourself. Ed Ache plays punk songs of such finely honed, cutting sarcasm that he’ll make your brain bleed; often very funny, always witty, usually politically targeted, his songs have catchy melodies that drive home their meanings and convince you of their truth as they get you singing along. They are performed in kinetic, driving… Read more

  • Tom Slatter – Iron Bark (progressive rock/ steampunk)

    Tom Slatter – Iron Bark (progressive rock/ steampunk)

    It’s rare that something truly original comes my way, something that I can’t really put in a box with anything else. Tom Slatter presents me with music for which I can find some comparisons, certainly: there’s a nuanced, psychedelic experimentalism to his compositions, reminiscent of some twentieth century classical music, that relates to some artists… Read more

  • Monday Musings: Cataclysmic Events In The History Of Music

    Monday Musings: Cataclysmic Events In The History Of Music

    Every so often in the history of music, something big happens. Beethoven comes along and suddenly everyone views artists (not just in music) in a new, heroic light. Punk explodes like a thermonuclear device, and suddenly popular music is a politicised site of struggle and revolution. Miles Davis releases Kind Of Blue and suddenly jazz… Read more

  • Chattabox & Rick Fury – Masta Blasta (hip-hop)

    Chattabox & Rick Fury – Masta Blasta (hip-hop)

    I’ve had a lot of fun listening to this album. I’m still having a lot of fun, and I expect to be listening to it for a good while yet. There’s little of the overt social commentary found on Dialect releases (or other releases this duo can be heard on), although they can’t help being… Read more

  • Hawk Horses – FALL (avant-folk)

    Hawk Horses – FALL (avant-folk)

    Folk music, as a widely shared conceptual category, is largely defined by a sense of authenticity: it is culturally specific music, and it is valued by many (or most) of its fans for its truthfulness to a particular sort of shared experience. This is not usually the personal experience of its listeners, but of the… Read more

  • Ed Muirhead – Cage For The Clouds (roots rock)

    Ed Muirhead – Cage For The Clouds (roots rock)

    The songs collected on this album are personal, individuated reflections: often concerned with love, their perspectives are firmly located behind the eyes of well imagined characters, and even when there is celebration in them (as in ‘Paradise’), there is insecurity and doubt as well. There is a tendency in popular song to express the everyday… Read more