Category: Music
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Saturday Summary 015
Freemium, and streaming models that offer entirely chimerical value are struggling this week. Which is nice. Pointless middlemen are finding it harder to get by in a market where they can no longer control access, and where ideological control structures are slipping away (or are starting to reflect a reshaped…
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Word Or Object – They Shoot Horses, But Why? (dark ambient/ drone)
The cover of this release shows a dead horse still harnessed to the broken cart before which it met its demise. This is a different sort of horse shooting than that referenced in the title: this beast was (one presumes) executed for its usefulness to its killer’s enemy, or simply…
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Chattabox And Samuel Otis – Hard Graft (hip-hop)
Thankfully it’s no longer necessary to pretend to be American to be taken seriously as a rapper, Brains McCloud & Silibil notwithstanding. Now you can spit lahk you be comin’ from sahf London unarmeen? Or you can ignore the scene’s prescriptions, and do what comes naturally. A big part of…
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datapuddle – MonkeySkyMonkey (indie/ folktronica)
This is an entertaining and individualistic album, that makes you laugh one minute, with its absurdist, science-fiction tinged humour, and then, while your mouth is still open, slaps you with something altogether less superficial. This is music with something to say, and it says it without going to either extreme,…
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Sissters – There’s A Party In My Mouth But You’re Not Invited (post-punk/ noise rock/ art-punk)
The word experimental is over-used in descriptions of avant-garde music, and is not always meaningful: who are we as listeners to judge whether an artist is conducting an experiment, or whether the sounds we hear represent their mature practice? However, experimental or not, There’s A Party In My Mouth And…
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Monday Musings: What Do Musicians Mean, And Does It Matter?
Music fans very often want to know something about the author of their favourite sounds. It is a widespread assumption that details of an artist’s biography or personality can provide an insight into their art: while this may or may not be the case, it is undeniable that the idea…
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Saturday Summary 014
This is my first separate weekly post of links and news: it’s number 14 because there were thirteen earlier posts that were joined on to my series of pompous essays (still known as Monday Musings).
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lextrical – Deletia (electronica/ indie/ folktronica)
Deletia opens with ‘Lunchbox D’, which begins with an obviously electronic backbeat; this is joined a bar later by a saturated, analogue sounding synth melody, and simultaneously by a guitar. This sets the pattern for the album: it is a predominantly electronic construction, but it is a highly organic one,…
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Cockdaughter – Cockdaughter (noise rock)
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp put a pissoir in a gallery: unfortunately, nearly a century later, many people still don’t get it. Those people will have trouble with the presentation of something as deliberately shambolic as Cockdaughter’s eponymous debut as a finished artwork; but it’s precisely to challenge that sense of…
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pje – hidden stone (ambient)
The sound of pje can be uncontroversially described as ambient, but it explores a number of avenues under that rubric. ‘diffract’ has strong drone elements, while ‘scattered’ incorporates a strummed acoustic guitar pattern, and ‘memory key’ is characterised by percussive elements, in a beat that is never quite fully articulated.…
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Meadows – Meadows (sludge metal)
Meadows play some pretty extreme music. You could make all sorts of comparisons: The Melvins are an obvious point of reference; they also put me in mind of Bongzilla, although they have some fast thrashy passages to go with the slow stoner doom, and a turgidly saturated bass distortion that…
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Monday Musings: Canons and Mainstreams
How often does someone say ‘you must listen to/ read/ watch cultural artifact X’? How often is it assumed that you are familiar with a particular album, or does someone express shock that you are unfamiliar with another? This week’s topic concerns the cultural canon, and the idea of a…
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Karda Estra – New Worlds (psychedelic/ progressive/ chamber music)
This album opens with a strummed guitar chord, and an oboe. The oboe is an instrument not often featured in rock, jazz, popular or folk music, and it signals with its presence that we should prepare ourselves for a variety of ‘not often featured’ elements. There are some sounds of…
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etokle – The Golden Bear And Other Works LP (drone/ ambient)
Sometimes when you visit my site to read a review you find yourself struggling through some complicated exposition on a rarely considered aspect of experimental music, full of technical terms and pointless intellectual gymnastics. I’m sorry about that. I’m a bit self indulgent sometimes. However, if I suspect that enough…
Oliver Arditi 