Author Archives: admin

Lau, Midnight And Closedown. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *

The world has taken a strange turning, instead of being ready to guard against the sense of the insidious and the pathetic, it seems many are willing to embrace the concept of self-serving individualism, a spectre of another time when to speak your mind in one direction was met with the utmost evil of retributions.

Blood Red Shoes, Get Tragic. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The tragedy of life is that for the most part we are only ever existing, we are never actively participating, comfortable in our routines, happy in the predictability, almost habit formed state of being in which have driven in and parked. At some point we find ourselves refusing to believe that the once blameless searching for excitement and even tension filled groove could instead lead to inertia, into the bowels of static apathy.

Carson McHone, Carousel. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There will always be those that assume with absolute certainty that to display melancholy is an abhorrence, they see it as willingness to wallow in the self-pity or the act of misery, they will openly declare war on you and leave messages condemning you for the dejection and unhappiness they perceive you spread with inner glee. There will always be those people, the best thing to do is ignore them, for melancholy is not a state of downhearted gloom, just perhaps a realisation that at times you need to reflect on what bought you to this point in time and the regret of all you could have done.

The Liminanas, I’ve Got Trouble In Mind Vol 2. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10


The world is obsessed with the idea of new, not fresh, not innovative, not original, just new. New is the catch-all modern step over the boundary, it implies edginess, when all that is being adorned is shock value, it suggests a tense unease at the revolution to come, yet the same colours are always to be seen flying from the mast at the break of day and at sunset. It feels as if it should agitate and stir things up, an insurrection in the novel, and yet new in this world is concerned with rampant commercialism and is only really a different package to sell the same thing you have had in your hands for the whole of your life.

Holiday Gunfire. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Only the more seasoned music lovers will truly remember the sheer exuberance the body and soul felt when they first came across seminal British band The Who, those of us who came to hear and love the foursome afterwards, perhaps what may be considered long after the fact can only guess, hopefully perceive, what it meant to have such a group join the ranks of 60s British luminaries as The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones.

The Brother’s Gillespie, The Fell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Close siblings with the same measured response to nature and art just seem to ally themselves perfectly to the sense of harmony that is sought after by all; whether it is the fields, the woods or within the reach of an open window as the countryside calls out to humanity to care for the environment, harmony is what we seek, and if it comes in the form of two human beings making music and the purity of vocal then that is the start of something beautiful.

Georges Simenon, Pietr The Latvian: Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

As introductions to a character go, the iconic French detective Maigret arguably could not have been delivered at a more timely moment, nor could Georges Simenon captured the essence of a decent man’s life when Europe was finding itself enveloped in the dark times to come, the shadow of one war had not truly been lifted, and the prospect of another, more deadly, more devastating than any other before it, loomed on the horizon.

Black Lake (Series Two). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Hedda Stiernstedt, Filip Berg, Daniel Larsson, David Nzinga, Bahar Pars, Alida Morberg, Andre Ericksen, Ester Udden, Anja Landgre.

When the makers of a serial decide in their infinite wisdom to take a story back before the events in which made their original premise a success, they leave themselves open to the kind of questions that would not befall them had they carried forth from the moment in which the initial resolution had been created.

Trapper Schoepp, Primetime Illusion. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The best of art arguably comes out of despair, damage or dysfunction, the most memorable of music is born in a place of darkness and heartfelt.  The open-eyed realisation that what was once a beautiful paradise is now a place in which distress grows, only alleviated in its promise to pull you under by the sound which captures the imagination and shows both the artist and the listener that there is light that can be seen to pulse wildly out of the sinister and sombre thoughts.

Magnum: Live At The Symphony Hall, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

What a night it was, one that perhaps might never have happened, one that was threatened by the Beast from the East a few weeks earlier and caused issues amongst those who were cornered by the worst snow to hit Birmingham for a generation; even the nearby statue, the so called Floozie in the Jacuzzi would have shed a thousand frozen tears to see the pity of a cancelled gig in the spiritual home of one the country’s leading Rock bands.