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The Huyton Minstrel, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool.

The Huyton Minstrel, June 2015, Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

The Huyton Minstrel, June 2015, Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The Huyton Minstrel looks down from upon the Zanzibar stage, stares into the eyes of anyone who is willing to catch his gaze and then without a moment’s hesitation, delivers the words of an angry, politically charged and unafraid poet right down the throats of the ever increasing mass of population that has made its way into the heart of the city on a dripping sweat and air still day.

The Huyton Minstrel, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. full post

(424 words, 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Nina Fian, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The near regal stance of Nina Fian as she performs at Zanzibar is akin to being asked to look at the majesty of Everest for the first time or to look deep into the heart of the Australian aboriginal tribes and try and describe just how beautiful and awe-inspiring Uluru is as a notion, an idea in which a thousand singing spirits can be heard lamenting the loss of Time.

Nina Fian, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. full post

(368 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Closing Time, Theatre Review. The Caledonia, Liverpool.

 

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Neil Macdonald, Mark Lacey, Kate Tracey, Pamela Ashton, Kier Howard, Kelly Forshaw.

The streets of Britain’s biggest cities were once proudly stocked with all manner of public houses. They are still there of course but the smaller, more neighbouring ones, the places where true conversation about local issues took place and the community could come together as one to celebrate, to communicate and commiserate together rather than being bombarded with noise and 24 hour drinking culture, those are slowly being left to rot, to die upon the alter of greater profits and the notion that they don’t matter anymore. Closing Time is no longer the utterance of the head barman or the landlady finally having had enough for the night and requiring bed.

Closing Time, Theatre Review. The Caledonia, Liverpool. full post

(487 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Nubian Kiss.

I lost a thousand days

and gained a thousand nights

on the moment I decided I could no longer

be in a relationship with my black Empress

who had seen me bathe naked

in a polluted river

every day since

I was a seventeen year old boy

desperate to be kissed by the exotic and hard done by.

 

What is there to be missed by letting the beauty go?

I mused one October morning at three, I left her

to be frozen out of my life

Nubian Kiss. full post

(192 words, estimated 46 secs reading time)

Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody, Prometheus, Symphonia Ignis Divinis.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Opera or classical music, like many other musical art forms, can be a divisive topic of discussion in the musical alleyways, you either love it or loathe it; you either see it for what it is or what you imagine it to be. However when the subtleties and booming experiences of the thought of higher end of musical experiences is met head on like a Minotaur gate-crashing a build your own maze party and one carrying the appeal of the rhapsody, then perceptions, like ideals, need to be challenged and fought against.

Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody, Prometheus, Symphonia Ignis Divinis. full post

(482 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Sons Of Mowgli, We Had A Time. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Time may move on, it may even stoke up the type of variations in quick succession that Charles Darwin spent most of his life studying but when it comes to the natural progression of a band, from one spectrum to another, the sweet sound of Sons of Mowgli is hard to beat. One that words of praise readily rests on the lips of the listener as they take in the words of the folk five-piece from Hoylake.

Sons Of Mowgli, We Had A Time. Album Review. full post

(416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Slow West, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorious, Rory McCann, Alexander Macqueen, Edwin Wright, Andrew Robertt, Brian Sergent, Bryan Michael Mills, Karl Willetts, Brooke Williams, Eddie Campbell, Ken Blackburn, Jeffrey Thomas, Michael Whalley, Jon Cummings, Madeleine Sami, Tony Croft, Kalani Queypo.

Slow West, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(614 words, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)

For The Missed.

I hate

how you make me miss you,

how you have occupied my thoughts

and perhaps being

the reason for the tarnish

upon my skin to have

returned,

scaly, dragon-like

and festering, biding its time

in which before the eruption and

the chemical disaster spill

combine

to infect every pore of my blistered skin

and I potter in darkness

away from the sun,

Marlowe stanced and not get over excited;

I hate

how I miss you.

 

I hate

For The Missed. full post

(180 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Politics, Promises And Predators – Local Young People Get Their Voices Heard At The Unity Theatre.

Award-winning Theatre Company 20 Stories High presents a vibrant double bill of two new plays at The Unity Theatre, Hope Street this July.

The local charity has been working with young people from excluded communities since 2006 and is growing from strength the strength sticking firmly to their belief that “Everybody’s got a story to tell, and their own way of telling it”.

In a first ever double bill for the company, both the company’s young groups will perform at the Unity Theatre and the plays have a distinctively political flavour.

Politics, Promises And Predators – Local Young People Get Their Voices Heard At The Unity Theatre. full post

(468 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

The Art Of Falling Apart, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2015).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Tim Lynskey,  Matt Rutter.

All good things must end, all exceptional pieces of writing and performing will live on beyond the final bow, the truth of the honest standing ovation and the lament that must come to us all; for in Robert Farquhar’s, Tim Lynskey’s and Matt Rutter’s outstanding The Art Of Falling Apart, the necessity of human experience, the sheer demand of Time and the complexity of the relationship between humanity and existence is there in all its brutally humorous and mischievous form.

The Art Of Falling Apart, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2015). full post

(441 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)