Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • 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

  • Music Basti – Monkey On The Roof (world music/ children’s)

    Music Basti – Monkey On The Roof (world music/ children’s)

    Monkey On The Roof is a document of, and a promotional, fundraising project for, an Indian charity called Music Basti. The charity brings music activities and education to street children in Delhi, in an organised, workshop based structure: their aim is to help give those children some hope for the future, and the skills of… Read more

  • Monday Musing: Art, Folk, Pop And The Taxonomy Of Musical Culture

    Monday Musing: Art, Folk, Pop And The Taxonomy Of Musical Culture

    There’s a broad classification of musical types that has some common currency, in artistic, marketing and academic circles. I want to briefly consider what it is, where it draws the lines between musics, whether it holds water, and what use it might be to those of us that think about music for whatever reason. There’s… Read more