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Cloud, Gig Review: Live Stream. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Perhaps the most poignant sentence was uttered towards the end of the nine day showcase of music at L.I.P.A.s Paul McCartney Auditorium as Oscar Vladau-Husevold, vocalist for Norwegian rockers Cloud, said with a the forming of a tear in his eye, the immortal word “Goodbye”.

This was not the way perhaps many of the artists leaving L.I.P.A. would choose to introduce the last song of their set, but it was arguably the most heartbreaking and yet profound moments in the days that have seen some of the most superb of artists to have graced the stage and some of the best music available to watch.

Cloud, Gig Review: Live Stream. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool. full post

(360 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Peasant’s King.

There is something in which to revel in when watching a band perform in Liverpool for the first time, especially when after they have finished, the sweat pouring from their joyful brows and the sound of the music still reverberating round the ears a week later. When it comes to Pontypridd’s Peasant’s King, the next great hope to come out of South Wales, that feeling of intensity, of gracious Rock abandon, is to hope that you get to see them perform again and again.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Peasant’s King. full post

(1475 words, estimated 5:54 mins reading time)

Snuffed Out.

You talked of candles

burning brightly and yet

as I sit here feeling uncomfortable

in my own skin

and the remains of a once good life

laying in pieces

time and time again

as I struggle with the infinite cosmic joke

played out, I want

to take the light-bulb wannabe, the shadow of a

sun ray and gently snuff it out,

I want to impale the candle

on to the head of my own hidden anxiety

and I would very much like to

Snuffed Out. full post

(300 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Rosenblume, Gig Review, Leaf, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Hype can be a tool in which certain yardsticks are set out to inevitably fail. Hype may gather interest, it may circulate a powerful emotion but the problem with hype is that it soon rusts; it fades into corporate fantasy and the sloth like figure of doomed expectancy. Hype is on the same level as hysteria, it rages and roars but then whimpers like a mouse caught choosing between three different slabs of meagre cheese.

Rosenblume, Gig Review, Leaf, Liverpool. full post

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

Tiz Mcnamara, Gig Review. Leaf, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is a cheeky, admirable quality to Tiz Mcnamara that crowds just cannot but help enjoy as he performs on stage in front of them. Having suggested with a glint in his eye and with the voice of pleasurable mischief coming through Leaf’s microphone, that he had swam all the way from Dublin to open for Rosenblume’s E.P. launch, there was no chance that he was going to leave Leaf’s packed audience without a smile on their face and a song in their already packed hearts.

Tiz Mcnamara, Gig Review. Leaf, Liverpool. full post

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

Blood Wedding, Theatre Review. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: EJ Raymond, Ricci McLeod, Irene Macdougall, Alison Halstead, Millie Turner, Miles Mitchell, Gerard McDermott, Ann Louis Ross. Amy Conachan.

There’s nothing like a wedding to enhance a good blood feud, to really get to the bottom of the relationship between one family and another, united in only one thing, absolute hatred of each other.

Lorca’s Blood Wedding explores the relationship of such feud but with that subtle twist that makes it stand out, makes it drive home the serrated cake knife home even further, as the least likely person on the day is the one calling the shots.

Blood Wedding, Theatre Review. Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. full post

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

Child 44, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Mark Lewis Jones, Joel Kinnaman, Fares Fares, Karel Dobrey, Agnieszka Grochowska, Petr Vanek, ana Stryková, Jason Clarke, Ursina Lardi, Michael Nardone, Jemma O’Brien, Lottie Steer, Barbora Lukesová, Petr Semerád, Paddy Considine, Zdenek Barinka, Finbar Lynch, Ned Dennehy, Vincent Cassel, Hana Frejková, Gary Oldman, Tara Fitzgerald, Charles Dance, Xavier Atkins.

 

Child 44, Film Review. full post

(771 words, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

They Hate You For Being Honest.

The more you open your mouth, the more I find

I don’t understand how people aren’t burning effigies of you

and asking if you are just by chance

playing the greatest political joke on a population

that has become ensnared between falsehood after false pretence,

of lie upon smear and finds itself lapping up the extremes

like a black spider, the eight legged terror, spinning

its web closer and closer together,

the tighter noose, not able to be crawled through,

let alone brushed aside, for fear of the millions

They Hate You For Being Honest. full post

(289 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Nora Konstanse, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool.

Nora Konstanse, Paul McCartney Auditorium. L.I.P.A., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Nora Konstanse, Paul McCartney Auditorium. L.I.P.A., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

There are times when you can sit in an auditorium, with a gathering of people, large or small, the taste of stale beer reeking from the floorboards, the feeling of a thousand echoing performances coming out of the walls to meet you with the stealth like attack of a thousand lost drum sticks floating in the air and a million dropped chords wreak havoc with the senses. That what has just taken place in front of you has the power to shift opinions and level mountains of built up former thoughts; a performance, that if captured on a Geiger counter, would have huge areas being cordoned off as the authorities braced themselves for public attitude fall out.

Nora Konstanse, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool. full post

(525 words, 1 image, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Mari Hajem, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool.

Mari Hajem in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.PA., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Mari Hajem in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.PA., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The feeling of goose pimples appearing on your body for no reason at all is not uncommon. Like all natural bodily functions, holding your breath without realising when something unexpected happens before your eyes, the small unseen nervous tick when grace goes out the window, the pleasure received with a huge unnoticed smile when the day is completed by the sense of overwhelming achievement. All are connected to the same route experience, that of understanding something magical has just taken place in your vicinity and that you are richer for the experience.

Mari Hajem, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool. full post

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