Yearly Archives: 2014

Steve Thompson & The Incidents, Rainbows. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The sound of an honest beating heart is perhaps the greatest aphrodisiac around. The desire to hear the words and playful teasing notes of musicians who you understand just really like what they do; who just want to entertain, educate and inform the listener of a world beyond the beige and the creeping insidiousness of believing that television has all the answers, to listen with desire is enough to break and rebuild your heart several times over.

All Quiet On The Western, Theatre Review. The Casa, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Durr, Alan Gillespie, Alun Parry, Adam Byrne, Ifan James, Syephen J Higgins, Alan Bower, Eleanor Parry, Giulia Rampone, Gillian Paterson-Fox, Helen Shrimpton.

In the year that marks the 100th Anniversary of the most futile, military posturing and insane of all wars commencing, it is always worth remembering that the conflict was not fought on the grounds of justness like its successor but by people who led their countries down a path in which millions of men, women and children were killed and slaughtered. A path in which bore fruit shamed in blackness and would propagate seeds so vile that the working class of all countries who participated in, would suffer the most terrible hardships and loss.

Under The Dome: Season Two. Television Review. Channel 5.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Mike Vogal, Rachelle Lefevre, Dean Norris, Alexander Koch, Colin Ford, Mackenzie Lintz, Eddie Cahill, Grace Victoria Cox, Max Erich, Dale Raoul, Sherry Stringfield, Dwight Yoakam, Brett Cullen, Aisha Hinds, Nicholas Strong, Britt Robertson, Natalie Martinez, Jolene Purdy, John Elvis.

What makes Stephen King’s Under The Dome so special that it has deserved more airtime than any of his other passages of American horror literature? It is a complex question that deserves answers, however there are but a few that present themselves adequately enough.

The Golf Club (PS4), Game Review

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5 out of 10

The Golf Club is a sports game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. As The Golf Club is the first of its kind produced for PS4; the obvious questions surrounding the release would have to be if it appropriately surpasses the quality of golf games that have gone before it on the previous generation of consoles and is it a worthy successor to Electronic Arts’ PGA Tour golf games.

Go West, Gig Review. Floral Pavilions, New Brighton.

 

Go West at the Floral Pavilions, New Brighton, November 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Go West at the Floral Pavilions, New Brighton, November 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Go West never have to send out an elaborate invitation for their fans to attend a night of music delight. The word seems to get out, made easier by 21st Century social media, that Peter Cox and Richard Drummie are going back out on the road, that they will be touring their much loved songs and like the proverbial baseball slogan, the audience comes, and the aisles and the spaces provided near the now neglected seats having irresistible dancing and loud appeals for more thrust ever closer to the stage.

Natalie McCool, Gig Review. Floral Pavilions, New Brighton.

 

Natalie McCool in New Brighton, November 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Natalie McCool in New Brighton, November 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

It may seem extraordinary, the type of story that even a seasoned publisher might balk at the idea of putting into print but the rise of Widnes songstress Natalie McCool is one that demands to be told over and over again and each time the narrative is accounted, the stronger it becomes and that is because like all good stories, it is, like her music, 100 per cent sincere.

Katherine Jenkins. Home Sweet Home. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

You can never have too much natural beauty in the world. The attraction of sitting back and being overawed by the sight of the sunlight bouncing of the droplets of water that drop in time to nature’s heartbeat off the sturdy Oak or the Mountain Ash and to the green grass below is matched in it vibrancy by the face of a young child when they finally realise the answer to a complex question.

Bryan Adams, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool.

Bryan Adams at the Liverpool Echo Arena, Photograph reproduced with kind permission by Marie Dodd, November 2014.

Bryan Adams at the Liverpool Echo Arena, Photograph reproduced with kind permission by Marie Dodd, November 2014.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

For the next few months the Liverpool Echo Arena will vibrate to the sound of the multitude of Rock acts that will come to the U.K.’s music city in a blistering undertaking to see out 2014 and to make sure 2015 is another vintage year to remember. With the likes of Peter Gabriel and The Who making their way to the Mersey shoreline, the Echo is getting the attention it deserves, with the Kaiser Chiefs, Korn and Slipknot all descending upon the music heart, it can surely only be time before other more established bands realise that the tour schedule doesn’t always have to stop at Manchester.

The Imitation Game, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kiera Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Stone, Charles Dance, Alan Leech, Tuppence Middleton, Rory Kinnear, Steven Waddington, Tom Goodman Hill, Matthew Beard, James Northcote, Alex Lawther, Jack Bannon.

 

Alan Turing was a hero of the British war effort in World War Two. His name is now lauded, researched and cheered for his significant part in saving many millions of lives during the darkest of days that shrouded Europe in a blanket of hate. It was due to fear and mistrust though that eventually saw the Professor take his own life in the cruellest of circumstances under a decade later.

Interstellar, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Matt Damon, Topher Grace, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, David Oyelowo, Collette Wolfe, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Timothée Chalamet, Francis X. McCarthy, Bill Irwin, William Devane, David Gyasi, Josh Stewart, Leah Cairns, Liam Dickinson.