Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
They say you can’t spend dreams, that to be a productive member of society you have to be continually clocking in and clocking off, that any aspirations, goals or hopes is not for the likes of the ordinary person in the street, the best you can hope for in troubled times is too stay alive and live for those who rule and command.
The beck and call, the doffing of the cap, sometimes it feels as if we haven’t moved on since the days when to be subservient to those above meant ignoring what you should be insisting you could achieve; it is almost an angry retort, the explosion of spirit, in which we should be demanding that we can be seen to be Living Off Dreams.
There is of course another way to see the world, to do with dignity, allow the voice to be the guiding light in the realm of the hope, even if it with honour that time is taken, for they might not allow you your dreams straight away but if it is done under their noses, if it does with style in whatever format then the victory is even more precious, more uplifting.
Stephen Skinn openly admits to spending a lot of time down at the studio in pursuit of his own music driven dream and he is a wonderful example of the point of the expression that it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as you never lose sight of your ambition.
Living off Dreams, anybody who wishes to leave something artistic or physically creative of their soul behind will always know that the chase of the dream will always leave you perhaps fiscally, as well as emotionally drained. However, as songs such as Cheater’s Heart, Secrets, A Thousand Skies, the beautiful and arguably prophetic Unchosen Choices and Never Alone play over the space between the listener’s hearts and their own soul filled desires, the sense of cheering on, congratulating another who has with huge determination and great musical skill gone onto make an album full of intricate and sensual songs, is very much done with a light and thankful heart.
We can all live to work, we can all play the game and be satisfied with the time off between the tick and the tock, but it takes the dedicated to their dreams to show us there is another way to live life; Stephen Skinn has produced a piece of art which thrills the bones.
Ian D. Hall