Author Archives: admin

The Truth About Phyllis Twigg. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tamsin Greig, Rory Kinnear, Aja Dodd, Amit Shah, Will Harrison-Wallace, Haydn Watts, Flora Saner, Hannah Brine.

Names are unavoidably erased from history, some through the sheer fact that not everybody can be remembered, and some because they have found a way to work under the auspices of a nom de plume, of hiding in plain sight so that the creative can have autonomy over their work whilst also holding onto the privilege of privacy. For writers and artists, it can lead to a thought of losing out on the credit where it was due, the public only adoring the name, and not the person behind it, gripping hard on to concealment at the cost of recognition.

The Truth About Phyllis Twigg. Audio Drama Review. full post

(450 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

A Final Cut.

Into the end of the bleakest night

 I finally resolved

to shred the remaining memories

of you.

Old photographs

where once you grinned,

I thought in youthful

happiness, but betrayed

by deceit and the chisel of the sneer

of selfish vanity,

all went the way of the vigilant calm

of the machine, cutting with no emotion

through the last few years of never-ending scars.

Then

in silence I found a card, badly written

professing sorrow,

your words scrawled untidily

as if written by conviction

A Final Cut. full post

(135 words, estimated 32 secs reading time)

Red Eye: Crimson Icarus. Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Jing Lusi, Lesley Sharp, Jemma Moore, Martin Compston, Nicholas Rowe, Jonathan Aris, Trevor White, Tom Forbes, Richard Armitage, Robert Gilbert, Hannah Steele, Tom Ashley, Steph Lacey.

It is with surprise that the second series of Red Eye seems to have learned the lessons presented by its initial series and produced a far more intriguing situation to be investigated by D.S Lee and one that releases the damaging limitations that shrouded Jinh Lusi in the lead role and which reinforces a truth that the world at large is not only caught in the crossfire of ideology, but that at its very core it suffers from the best laid plans of those we might consider to be serving our own best interests.

Red Eye: Crimson Icarus. Television Series Review. full post

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

Dan O’Farrell & The Difference Engine: The Fish That Learned To Drown. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Dark humour and pain are often seen as disturbed cousins, sharing a bond that is born out of discomfort and a psychological ache that refuses to beat in a way that would imply expired confidence, a sadness that is overwhelming. There is no avoiding this special connection in life, the only option is to embrace it, to feed the soul with all that comes in the forms of loss, the failure of errant communication, loneliness, broken faith, and even feeling ill at ease when the world is content and your body has no reason to squirm; and like mastering sarcasm, the need for dark humour even in the most trying of times is of paramount necessity.   

Dan O’Farrell & The Difference Engine: The Fish That Learned To Drown. Album Review. full post

(435 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

DVM Spiro: MMXXVI-Grave. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Atmosphere is important when life holds the opportunity to hear a version of majesty that comes from a language other than your own. Grandeur is always welcome, but it should always be presented in such a way that it holds sincerity, not just a flash of inspiration dressed in the clothes of modesty, but full on application of audible prosperity, it should leave the listener with an impression of explosions at the edge of the stratosphere and the feeling of energy at is heart.

DVM Spiro: MMXXVI-Grave. Album Review. full post

(394 words, 1 image, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

James Patterson: Return Of The Spider. Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To predict the future, you must first understand the past. This balancing act of a person’s life where the onlooking stranger and interested voyeur can dip in and out and feel informed of the whys and wherefores is often misread and misconstrued, never content to learn everything that led to the moment where their prey fell in the eyes of the public, taking glee, being joyful in the way they perceive that the master has become nothing more than a whisper in the annals of their profession.

James Patterson: Return Of The Spider. Book Review. full post

(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Helen Maw: The Beacon. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We search for the light that will guide us, for the lamp that warns, and our eyes are irrevocably focused on the darkness for the beacon that offers us hope, the substantial fire in the distance that calls for aid, that signals the moment to return home and leave the broken soul that you carry with heavy heart behind.

In the modern world we are summoned to ride the distance by the incessant ping of the artificial, the buzz of electronic, and unlike the beacon that grows steadily, and which asks your mind to fully accept that which glows, the damnation of the synthetic growls like a cornered wolf, offering urgency instead of warmth and heart.

Helen Maw: The Beacon. Single Review. full post

(332 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Amadeus. Television Drama Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Paul Bettany, Will Sharpe, Gabreille Creevy, Olivia-Mai Barrett, Orsolya Heletya, Emma Lowndes, Jonathan Aris, Rory Kinnear, Kristián Cser, Anastasia Martin, Lucy Cohu, Viola Preetejohn, Rupert Vansittart, Colin Hoult, Paul Bazely, Jack Farthing, Enyi Okoronkwo, Hugh Sachs.

In its attempt to appeal to all, television has found a way to sanitise even the most glorious of human beings that have created such works of art that their very presence gives us hope, that we explain away the madness in the mind and in the soul, and for the most part it has found a way to dissect and criticise, find a way to not exemplify the brilliance, but desecrate the self, find fault at every possible moment.

Amadeus. Television Drama Series Review. full post

(547 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

A Ghost Story For Christmas: The Room In The Tower. Television Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Joanna Lumley, Tobias Menzies, Nancy Carroll, Ben Mansfield, Polly Walker.

A tale told well is always worth the time spent watching it unfold, and yet its opposite is one that seems to spare itself from being truly explored feels to the viewer almost as if they are being punished for caring about previous encounters with the writer or the subject matter.

A Ghost Story For Christmas: The Room In The Tower. Television Drama Review. full post

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

Ian Dury: Too Nutty To Be Naughty -The Studio Recordings 1977-2002. Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

In a fair and just world Ian Dury would have been more than just a working class hero, he would have risen above the status of informed commentator, he would have surely been an assured laureate, esteemed in high circles, venerated as one of Britain’s finest poets…but then he would have been pressured to conform, to be seen as a voice of those that bore no consequence to how they took delight on keeping the lower classes in order; he would have had to show a kind of normalcy that was less about vision but of compliance, and the master word builder of his generation would never have allowed that.

Ian Dury: Too Nutty To Be Naughty -The Studio Recordings 1977-2002. Box Set Review. full post

(516 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)