Author Archives: admin

To Catch A Killer. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Shailene Woodley. Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo, Ralph Ineson, Richard Zeman, Dusan Dukic, Jason Cavalier, Nick Walker, Darcy Laurie, Mark Camacho, Frank Schorpion, Marcello Bezina, Dawn Lambing, Martyne Musau, Michael Cram, Chip Chuipka, Heidi Foss, Michael Dozier, Mark Anthony Krupa, Rosemary Dunsmore, Lesley Pahl.

The thought is usually unsaid, the lips not wishing or willing to suggest or insist the terrible truth, that the lines between law and order are often blurred, clouded by the fact that the ones defending the thin blue line are as often or not just as capable of being the ones to whom mayhem and murder are just as appealing a prospect.

To Catch A Killer. Film Review. full post

(479 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Parker Ferrell: Love Runs Through. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

A universal truth must come when we learn to observe more than just our own footsteps, more than just our lives in the moment if we are to grow and progress as a species.

That truth, one of many and never singular is alive to the certainty that we are connected, that we must observe others on the same road, those that travel with us in our time, those that go against the flow, those that stand still or those that trudge or stride with purpose in ways that we thought was unobtainable and unimaginable…for whichever way the road points we can but hope that Love Runs Through the course of the observer’s mind, that it connects with all around it; and by doing so creates energy and art as a symbol of what has been witnessed. 

Parker Ferrell: Love Runs Through. Album Review. full post

(429 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon: Other Worlds. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Mark Benton, Nicola Blackman, Robert Cavanah, Luke R. Francis, Indigo Griffiths, Victoria Jeffrey, Malcolm Jeffries, Hywel Morgan, Sarah Priddy, John Rayment.

Tread softly in the worlds of others, for your presence has not been anticipated enough for it not to leave a groove in the sands of their time.

Rose Tyler has had to learn this the hard way, initially with her travels with the Doctor, then as she is stranded in another version of Earth, a parallel world where the fabric of time has altered certain aspects of what she, and the listener, would take for granted.

Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon: Other Worlds. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(513 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Once and Future – Past Lives. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Sadie Miller, Jemma Redgrave, Ingrid Oliver, Rufus Hound, Ewan Bailey, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Stephen Noonan, Dan Starkey, Tim Treloar, Michael Troughton.

Stories are important, they are magical, they are a link to our past and our determination to see the future shaped in our image. Once a story has been silenced it becomes myth, the unspoken, the heritage of the speaker denied…but some tales persist in Time, they become the backdrop to our society, to our history and the dream that such days can once more return.

Doctor Who: Once and Future – Past Lives. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(643 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

Dannii Minogue: Neon Lights. 20th Anniversary Reissue. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is with celebration that the chance to revel in a re-release of a fan favourite and a classic of its genre should come for those who took instantly to the presence of another Minogue sister in the pop charts.

Dannii Minogue: Neon Lights. 20th Anniversary Reissue. Album Review. full post

(426 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Gavin Baddeley And Paul Woods: Jack The Ripper – The Murders And The Myths. Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is perhaps telling of our modern approach to certain beguiling questions that a series of murders committed more than 130 years ago still finds ways to take hold of a conversation when other, arguably more pressing, concerns consistently become relegated to that of whimsy and fruitless explorations.

The consistency of new books and theories concerning Jack The Ripper and his insidious crimes has become its own cottage industry, and to find something novel, an original piece of thinking is its own reward when found.

Gavin Baddeley And Paul Woods: Jack The Ripper – The Murders And The Myths. Book Review. full post

(490 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Alexander Hanson, Clive Rowe, Kevin Whately, Samantha Spiro, Shobna Gulati, Jenna Russell, Jane Bertish, David Rubin, Dylan Wood, Tessa Wong, Matthew Bose, Ben Godard.

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one…”

No matter how hard people within certain professions try, what they see whilst they are holding communities together, stopping cities from becoming zones overrun by fear, hate, damnation, they can never truly see the sparkle of a day without something reminding them that underneath it all the spectre of humanity’s more base instincts will rise to the surface and threaten to pour oil over small fires burning, will make any compulsion to sing one that becomes a mumble of forgotten promises in front of the paying audience.

Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review. full post

(538 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

Beverley Craven: Memories (The Complete Epic Recordings 1990-1999). Album Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We thankfully live in age where we can place our thoughts of a creative’s art with informed insight as they delve into their back catalogue and remind, through combined packaging and box sets, of their journey, their exploration of their individuality and dreams, their sound as they honed expression and voice in such a way that does not immediately become clear when listening, in music’s sense, to a single album and then another perhaps a few weeks later.

Beverley Craven: Memories (The Complete Epic Recordings 1990-1999). Album Box Set Review. full post

(486 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Steely Dan: Countdown To Ecstasy. Album Review. (2023 Reissue).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To look back at an album, at any piece of art, and declare it to be prophetic, is to ascribe meaning to a moment uttered and echoed though out time by our own perceived belief of how the world has turned out.

Yet, with that said, future insight is a skill of mindful endurance, of being able to assign certain scenarios to current news item and allowing the imagination to flow unabated by personal feeling to produce what could be the eventuality, the final piece of the puzzle and presenting in such a way that it has the voyeur of the art being committed to open suggestion that it was always meant to be.

Steely Dan: Countdown To Ecstasy. Album Review. (2023 Reissue). full post

(494 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Gentle Giant: Interview. Album Re-release Review. (2023).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Progressive Rock is a spirited animal that deserves its freedom, but the art of the concept is such that it requires gentle nurturing by band and listener alike.

In the last decade more seminal bands from the golden period of the genre have found a way to have their voice reheard; early Jethro Tull have benefitted greatly from such a move, King Crimson, Yes, Gentle Giant, Rush, and even Marillion have been given the treatment of renewal, and it is perhaps down to the prodigious work by one of the modern greats of the genre, Steven Wilson, that the music of a time when all could be Kings, is being once again revered and lauded for the intensity and thought it once held aloft.

Gentle Giant: Interview. Album Re-release Review. (2023). full post

(480 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)