Category Archives: Music

Captain Of The Lost Waves: Success In Failure. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We are urged, almost dictated to in no small measure, to believe that success is the be all and end all, the point of human existence is to reach the top of the tree, look down with commitment and contentment and almost be smug in our satisfaction for winning in the game of life.

Status Quo: The Early Years 1966-69. Box-Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

History could have been so different, the sound of the three bar blues delivered with a frantic pace and the opening slot of the televised spectacle of Live Aid would have been another band’s preserve; for in a world of what ifs and maybes the memory or discovery of what Status Quo are to many might well have been wiped clean and forgotten, the potential of the double denim rock and one of the most endearing and enduring bands lost to another plane of existence.

Keith Thompson: Enigmatic Blues. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Like moths to the flame, we search for the enigmatic without concern to how we will react when we get to close to the fire within.

The compelling resurgence of Blues in the 21st Century is a gift for the music lover, as once again it offers the listener a remarkable insight into the human condition of melancholy with passion and honesty, and capture the enigmatic as it happens, as it plays wonderful havoc with our senses and our soul.

Ma Polaine’s Great Decline: Molecules. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Those attractive forces that bind us together, a wicked game they conceive when they know we will fall for the art that comes our way.

Ma Polaine’s Great Decline sees the Somerset pairing of Beth Packer and Clint Hough return to the music lover’s attention with their brand new studio album, Molecules, and it is with ever open arms and fondness for the uniquely sounding artists that the public will offer for the spiritual heroes of the dark introspection and commitment of the mix and jazz and blues/folk one of joy; those attractive forces once more in the hands of masters of story telling with song form.

John Meed: A Sudden Rain. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We all love a storyteller, their words and means of delivery are at the heart of the essence of humanity; and yet we perhaps don’t give them all the credit they deserve, only venerating themselves when the emotions fall, in the audience’s mind, like A Sudden Rain that comes out of the ether and refreshes all it touches, turning parched ground to a forest of green, idyllic, lush grass.

Buffalo Skinners: Picking Up What You’re Putting Down. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We lay a trail in the hope that someone comes along and gathers the signal and instruction we leave hanging in the ether so that it may be translated, so that we know in our heart our message has been heard.

Picking Up What You’re Putting Down is the understanding that we are more than our own shadows, we are the means of reception to others to have their thoughts interpreted, to send their voice onwards, and like a CB  radio being used in the darkness of the home of a teenager in Britain during the 70s and 80s, the sounds we hear and notice are exotic and deeply engrained in a world once out of our reach.

Dion: Girl Friends. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Surround yourself with the best and the best that you can be reveals itself without caution, without restraint, with genuine pleasure and playful liberation of the soul.

A line up of a galaxy of stars in the heavens could not improve upon the aural spectacle that is refined and purposely driven with a groove of splendour in the new album from the legendary American hero Dion, Girl Friends.

Nicki Adams and Michael Eaton: The Transcendental. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The world of Jazz has arguably never been more accessible and in rude health. Indeed, when compared to other forms of music it is one that whilst adopted by those who loved the anonymity provided by the venues and the once smoky atmosphere, has been recognised as offering the listener something new and novel each time they hear an artist perform a section of music that crosses the boundary between the human and the sense of spiritual excess challenges.

Bruce Dickinson: The Mandrake Project. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

On the back of greatness, we often find ourselves wondering how we can achieve an even larger, more vast declaration of intent.

Close to two full decades since Bruce Dickinson found his way into the recording studio without any back up from the Iron Maiden family, The Mandrake Project is that album of glorious purpose after a run of seismic recordings from Eddie’s boys that returned them rightfully to the top ten charts, and in doing so scored their first number one in the U.K. since the release of the scintillating Fear Of The Dark

Pete Wylie: The Mighty Wah! : Teach Yourself Wah!- A Best Of. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Living legends are a hard commodity to explain, even more so in the explosion of talent that has come our way since the internet and its billions of users found ways to extoll the presence of anyone who can light up a screen with their various degrees of talent; the proof if ever needed that we can all be amazing, we can all be something extraordinary, it just takes one more ingredient, a quality of enigma that must shine brighter, must be so overwhelming, that it catches a moment in time with a ferocity that those who witness it will never be the same again.