Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is possible to get lost once in a while, to lose all sense of direction and notice that not even the stars can navigate you home; when that happens the best thing to do is look down, not in self pity, not in recrimination but in the assurance that the best way home is to follow the Track Marks laid down long before.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
To keep your Head Down can be seen as honourable and certainly wise as the gunfire ravages and takes no prisoners; in the end, when all is laid waste, what remains is the auditory sound of the blessed and the determined, the righteous and the indomitable.
The first of three sets of music performed, recorded and mixed by Scott Midlane, Head Down is a sultry affair of acoustic bliss but one that covers with the darkest of cowls a sense of rage and heat which is gritty, strong willed and beautiful to feel permeating across the airwaves.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The string quartet is one of delight, harmony within the bow and the wood, a sound that carry heaven upon its shoulders and yet break your heart as easily as a first school crush. Many make much of the virtue of four guitars working in tandem or the beat of a double sided drum kit banging out in unison the call of the wild and the snare of a trap well laid, yet a string section, regardless of whether in pairs or by the full blown orchestral promise, can take your heart to places it never knew possible and the mind into the realms of deep fascination for the sheer synchronisation possible.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Sean Bean, Adrian Dunbar, Muna Otaru, Mark Stanley, Aine Ni Mhuiri, Rochenda Sandall, Paula Malcolmson, Paul Copley, Vanessa Earl, Steve Garti, Jerome Holder, David McClelland, Aoife McMahon, Naomi Pickering, Lauren Lyle, Anna Friel, Faye McKeever, Debra Michaels, Matthew Wilson, Thomas Arnold, Daniel C. Bishop, Eithne Browne, Clare Calbraith, Ned Dennehy, Jack Harper, Phil Davies.
When you realise
that you have been nobody’s
afternoon idle dream,
that the role of shining knight
was reserved for whoever rode
the biggest horse
or that you cannot imagine
that the world would not be happier
without you in it, that your smile
counted for nothing
on a good day,
then everything else just falls into place,
that you are part of the ninety-nine
percent, even though
you feel alone;
truly and irrevocably in the way
in a room shrouded in people
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It doesn’t take much mental acumen to notice that the machine is getting bigger, more intolerable, extra insidious; you would have to be without sight and the ability to listen to know that life is less about freedom and more of being ground down and used for fertiliser. Pink Floyd may have welcomed you to the machine but Nickelback have shown in their latest release just how to Feed The Machine.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Killian Scott, Benjamin O’ Mahony, Joseph Mawle, Jonas Armstrong, Lydia Wilson, Anna Burnett, Matthew Lewis, Ellie Haddington, Maeve Dermody, Jack Bannon, Joseph Harmon, Gerry O’ Brien.
No matter where you put a man, in a cell or out of harm’s way, the Victorian thinking was they would all eventually revert to a type, that each person could not escape their basic human trait. Good or evil, eventually your character would show and for those caught between the two, being in your guard was not enough.
We have allowed ourselves
to drown,
consented across the board
to be consumed
and driven mad
by want
and excess,
accepting
that
the bar code
that once was inked
and tattooed
on a brethren’s arm
is now
a status symbol
to purchase
things
more easily.
Ian D. Hall 2017
She should have turned back. What was the point of this journey? In my mind I realised that she could have been anyone, she might have been telling me the truth from the moment I boarded the Greyhound bus in Cleveland, she could be on her way to Paris to study art by the Seine, to see the world in the same way he had desired, needed to do. The bus was certainly cheaper to get to Philadelphia where she said her sister lived, to pick up her tickets to fly to France and then go on to study the fine art she breathed whilst spending her free time underneath a bridge or two, perhaps sitting within a tossed baseball of the Eiffel Tower or sitting drinking coffee in one of the numerous cafés that lined the Parisian walkways.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When you move away from the epic and the glorious, from the style of the concept album you sometimes open yourself up to criticism, that the complex web you wove into an album is now beyond you, that the songs are almost to mainstream and easy on the ear; that by taking a step back to rediscover your roots what you do instead is turn around and start walking backwards to a place where people forget what you brought into their lives.