Author Archives: admin

Idlewild, Interview Music. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10

In the end it comes to more than just emotion, be it raw, unfiltered and tender, to carry the sense of the powerful into the hearts of all who may hear the rallying cry set down by artists of all persuasions. More than emotion, more than just the ability to give the audience hope, it is has to find a way into the soul and sting, like the comfort afforded by the realisation that the person you might have called friend turns out to be someone to avoid, at least you understand the lesson that has been learned when conversation turns against you.

Idlewild, Interview Music. Album Review. full post

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

Siren’s Song, Without The Fear. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *

To live Without The Fear one must surely have confronted the demons in the mind and found them to be lacking substance, to have laughed at the inconsequential and witnessed fear shrink and become nothing more than a nuisance to be scolded in much the same way that we hold the same measure of account and disdain to ignorance. These twin monsters, if left unchecked, sap at the strength and will, and then as the Siren’s Song is enticingly heard and grasped for in an effort to be saved, fear can be seen to become overwhelming and bitter.

Siren’s Song, Without The Fear. Single Review. full post

(374 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Locate Your Lips, For Kenny. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To be born in anger is to find that the universe in its infinite wisdom has something truly special waiting up its sleeve for you, to be remembered when the anger has left to be replaced by calm, by the spirit of the times, and if placed in the hands of those who remember your brilliance after you have left for the bigger stages to come, will shout your name from the highest vantage point and demand that the party be continued in your honour.

Locate Your Lips, For Kenny. Album Review. full post

(554 words, 1 image, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Bohemea, Septimus. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10

A sudden musical blast that you were not expecting can be as exciting to rally around as that which you have been eagerly anticipating for a year, like a tornado ripping through your soul, or an avalanche seen from the safety of nearby mountain, you can only take in the majesty of the force of nature as she sweeps all before it, as she lays in wait to catch you unawares and leave you marvellously breathless.

Bohemea, Septimus. Single Review. full post

(414 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Kross, Freya Mavor, John Henshaw, Harry Melling, Michael Socha, Dave Johns, Barbara Young, Chloe Harris, Mikey Collins, Gary Lewis, Dervla Kirwan, Angus Barnett, Butz Ulrich Buse, Julian Sands, Olivia-Rose Minnis.

To capture a life in sport in film is something that cinema normally fails to truly understand, it focuses too readily on the large scale, the sense of the occasion and the thousand flashing lights that go off in the subject’s face when they battle through adversity to claim the prize they have long dreamed of holding aloft. Regardless of whether it is in the realm of fiction, or in the arena of prepared truth, films about sporting heroes always feel as if they have only room for the fantasy, the polished glamour and the underdog suitable ending which arguably would feel more at home between the pages of Roy of the Rovers, Victor or Tiger comic books.

The Keeper, Film Review. Picturehouse @ F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

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

Sleeper, The Modern Age. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It could be argued that for many of us The Modern Age is not what we thought it was going to be but then with hindsight and given our past, what else could it be but one in which the urge to rebel, to create havoc and roar as if cornered by some disease of will that has seen us sleep-walk into an era that is only a short step away from being a dystopian novel writer’s fantasy creation. It could have all been so different but then would that have brought back from the depths of the never again promise that 90s Brit Pop favourites, Sleeper insisted upon.

Sleeper, The Modern Age. Album Review. full post

(404 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Princess & The Hustler, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kudzai Sitima, Donna Berlin, Fode Simbo, Seun Shate, Jade Yourell, Emily Burnett, Romayne Andrews.

We either don’t know enough about our own history, or if we do we selectively tune in to the moments which make us feel a false sense of pride, the stirring of the heart as it clings to a despairing sense of nationalism that is both futile and dishonest; we forget the moments that led to change and only the act itself, and never mind the hardship, the disgrace of our words that went before, hiding behind the celebrations of equality gained as if we somehow played a part.

Princess & The Hustler, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

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

Fontaines D.C., Dogrel. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The truth is slowly being erased in the name of progress’ elitist sibling, gentrification, everywhere you look there is the eradication of what makes a city or a town hum with excitement, with the friction of what is real and what sticks out like a sore thumb in the face of modern and the beige. Yet despite the feeling of up to date dogma and glistening glass that shrouds us all into being consumers of the unwanted, there is still the Dogrel of those who refuse banality and same safe thoughts of not standing out, the voice of those who perhaps read Joyce’s Dubliners and revelled in the early punk ethic captured by The Boomtown Rats and who now commit to keeping a certain culture alive and beating hard.

Fontaines D.C., Dogrel. Album Review. full post

(461 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Sarah-Jane Summers, Owerset. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To those that don’t understand the concept, the words of the free-thinking person are incomprehensible, strange, even bordering on the dangerous and threatening. The strangeness of the words, the very ideas, they act as if they were bonded in treachery, the straight-jacketed observance hearing only betrayal to the hive mind, the mantra that is constant being questioned; it is no wonder artists of all persuasions are adored but also feared, loved for the sweet release they offer for a while, afraid in some quarters because of the questioning hope they insist on releasing is not easy to translate.

Sarah-Jane Summers, Owerset. Album Review. full post

(380 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Jesse Mac Cormack, Now. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Shining a light through a prism and seeing the array of colours may be a dominate reminder of glories past, of the upheld reflection in which certain Progressive moods were initially formed and which have always been at the undercurrent of many a music fans way of thinking; but a prism can allude to more than just Time and light being slowed down and marvelled at, it is the refraction which illuminates in the Now and one that marvels at the luminosity caught, that is meticulous and filled with beauty.

Jesse Mac Cormack, Now. Album Review. full post

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