Author Archives: admin

Rachel Baiman: Common Nation Of Sorrow. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Perhaps for the first time since the dark days that shrouded Europe and much of the world, we are going through a period of time in human history that 90 percent of us are feeling an emotion that is akin to sorrow, a grief that we cannot explain, a regret we cannot describe, an unhappiness we don’t know how to shed; and yet we fight on, smiles plastered to our faces as if positioned there by a child with a crayon, an empty laugh forever hanging on our lips.

Rachel Baiman: Common Nation Of Sorrow. Album Review. full post

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

Sean Taylor Band: Live. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

By definition, a musician will slowly reveal their most intimate selves the more they shed others around them.

It is understandable that the group of friends who grew up together, rehearsed, argued, loved, made their statements of their youth and observations, should slowly drift apart and their worlds take on different meanings. As night follows day, the longer the musician stays in touch with the public, the more likely they are to have a solo career that outshines, at least critically, their former life within the structure of the band.

Sean Taylor Band: Live. Album Review. full post

(370 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Kaxio: Full Devoid. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Being normal and sticking to convention is not, and has never been, cool.

To be questioned on your approach to your vision rather than just blindly being accepted is a gift to which many are denied, and for whom far too many blindly wish to serve.

Why should the mysterious, the enigmatic, and the cryptic be solely for the preserve of the dark, for to enlighten the world we must seek to assure those who have a different artistic vision that they also will be heard in the open bright stage, that the Full Devoid lacks nothing in the eyes and soul of those who see the potential and the drama that will ensue.

Kaxio: Full Devoid. Album Review. full post

(420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Rookery Ensemble: Islets of Langerhans. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

In a world that encourages the stilted and formal to be take on the mantle of leadership, it is the courage of the experimental to whom we should hail as directors, the spearheads in a campaign against the beige and obscenely dull.

There is a difference between searching for the novel form in which to instigate intrigue and attraction and that of the drastic manoeuvre in which the brash display their thoughts via the medium of promotion of self-illusion, of boasting through the art of conceit; one is an honest adventure, the other arguably a titillation for the audience of bluster and vanity.

Rookery Ensemble: Islets of Langerhans. Album Review. full post

(410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

His Dark Materials. Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, Amir Wilson, Will Keen, Lewin Lloyd, Jade Anouka, Simone Kirby, Chipo Chung, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Jonathan Aris, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jamie Ward, Sian Clifford, Alex Hassell, Lia Williams, Simon Harrison, Amber Fitzgerald-Woolfe, Nina Sosanya, Andrew Scott, Lin Manuel Miranda, Victoria Hamilton, Kit Connor, Joe Tandberg, Sope Dirisu, Lindsay Duncan, Kate Ashfield, Emma Tate, Patricia Allison, Tuppence Middleton, Sorcha Groundsell, Wade Briggs, Peter Wright.

His Dark Materials. Series Three. Television Review. full post

(541 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Gurira, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dominque Thorne, Florence Kasumba, Michaela Coel, Mabel Cadena.

As a mark of respect to the late Chadwick Boseman, the tribute to a fine actor’s work, should not be in question, but maybe the timing of the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the way in which the focus was shifted on as one of Marvel’s true great and Golden Age heroes was almost relegated in his pedigree and scope, or even in the way that as a finale to a phase it was messed around should all be given sharp focus on how not to give the excellent Ryan Coogler short shrift when it comes to storytelling.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Film Review. full post

(542 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Seeing Red: Keep The Fire Burning/Edzell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Whatever makes you feel passion, it is possible that you are Seeing Red.

There is a melancholic feeling that is understandable to all, even those that decry it, putting it down to self-indulgence, insisting it is a decadence, an unrestraint of emotions; to these we should ignore for they have forgotten what it means to feel, to hold love, to embrace pity, to acknowledge the luxury that is an demonstrative response to being human and all its misery and pleasures in equal measure.

Seeing Red: Keep The Fire Burning/Edzell. Album Review. full post

(395 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

The Signalman. Audio Drama Review. (2022).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Samuel West, James Purefoy, Sally Orrock, Nicholas Murchie.

Honour those who find their inspiration in the darkest chapters of their life, for they have seen Hell and are still able to inform you of the dangers to come.

Charles Dickens’ tale of The Signalman is one of the most creative stories from the British writer, shorter than his other works of fiction, but one that gets to grips with the century’s fear of the technology of the time, the sense of dread that came with innovation, the sounds of machines.

The Signalman. Audio Drama Review. (2022). full post

(500 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Nolly. Television Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Con O’Neill, Augustus Prew, Mark Gatiss, Antonia Bernath, Chloe Harris, Lloyd Griffiths, Richard Lintern, Bethany Antonia, Clare Foster, Emily Butcher, Matt Crosby, Emily Langham, Adele Taylor, Adam Morris, Kerry Washington, Sophie Lucas, Philip Gascoyne, Max Brown, Paulo Braghetto, Tim Wallers.

For anybody who had not yet opened their eyes and stared at the fuzzy images of life at a time when even five terrestrial stations seemed excessive, to find out that there were simple homegrown programmes that could command such loyalty of viewers that over 15 million people would tune in and watch convoluted plots and the now famous ‘wonky sets’, they would consider it a preposterous notion, absurd nostalgia that could not be true.

Nolly. Television Drama Review. full post

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

David Fisher: Doctor Who – The Androids Of Tara. Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For a certain period of time, it seemed that you could not watch Doctor Who on a Saturday evening, the resolute fan favourite Tom Baker at the helm and controls of the Tardis, without the enormity of having the power of an android on screen, a servant, a slave, an all-powerful machine that would terrorise the thoughts and imagination of younger viewers and seasoned viewers alike.

David Fisher: Doctor Who – The Androids Of Tara. Book Review. full post

(469 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)