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Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Havoc DLC (PS4), Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Havoc is downloadable content for the first-person shooter game available from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Havoc provides downloadable content for the multi-million selling Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare with the addition of the much requested Exo Zombies game mode and expanding the roster of multiplayer maps.

Paul Simon And Sting, Gig Review. Manchester Phones4U Arena.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

When audiences first heard about this gig, the pairing of Paul Simon with Sting was one that may have struck many as not being an obvious combination and having seen the gig, for many it arguably still doesn’t – they’re an odd couple of monumentally iconic proportions but together they delivered a very special night indeed.

The stage was jam packed with musicians of the very highest quality – the session guys worked in shifts – some with Paul, some with Sting, including the legendary drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and some with both, which gave the whole night a real feeling of unity but what nobody could have expected was three gigs for the price of one.

Birdsong, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Edmund Wiseman, Emily Bowker, Selma Brook, Max Bowden, Cloudia Swann, Peter Duncan, Emily Altneu, James Staddon, Liam McCormick, Roger Martin, Alastair Whatley, James Findlay.

Even in the foul grip of war, there must be a love that carries the soldier across the boundary between the stench of perpetual death and the sanity that is provided by having something to live for. Love in the midst of war is what keeps the thoughts of ordinary men from turning into barbarians and for those who do the fighting, whether above ground, on the fields of No Man’s Land or in the tunnels, love can be the saving point. Love is a peculiar Birdsong.

Stealing Sheep, Not Real. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

They are one of the most uniquely sounding bands to come out of the twin musical areas of Liverpool and Birmingham for some time but even then it doesn’t guarantee that a new album will have anything the intensity or the overflowing amount of passion that their debut or any of their abundant gigs have had.

Ice (s)Cream Revolution.

We find ourselves with a very unique opportunity

to do the right thing but the British enjoyment of sticking

to the choice supposedly only offered between vanilla and raspberry

stops Mint Choc from ever being tasted on a Day in May afternoon.

 

It is a very British howl of complaint

that at the back of our minds, the thought that struggles to be free

and roam wild, perhaps by not going down the same old, same old

tired route and certainly keeping away from that foul

Beth Hart, Better Than Home. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

You can ask for many things in life, world peace, the end to hunger, humanity living side by side in genuine respect…the list is endless and in all honesty hardly likely to happen. You can though, and surely must always be allowed the privilege of hearing a Beth Hart album at some point during the busy weeks ahead. This is a pre-requisite for getting through Time, the chance to listen to a genuine female legend of 21st Century Blues Rock at her prolific best. This prolific, demanding the clearest mind’s attention nature is captured in true style with her latest release, Better Than Home.

Harriet!, Hidden Messages. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There will always be those that say that different generations cannot relate to each other, that the signs and signals sent out by one, are at best taken as nonsense and that they haven’t lived yet, at worst, degraded to the point of supreme arrogance and as condescending as anybody could ever hope to achieve.

Cobain: Montage Of Heck, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Too many modern Rock and music documentaries live in the moment; they are stifled by the effects of the past and constricted by image. The opposite is perhaps arguably true of the biopic, one that in many ways glamorises the person involved, certain areas of life, of thoughts and deeds airbrushed out, spoken as if acting as a token, a memento in which the picture doesn’t want to go down a certain route but invites the viewer to do it on their own but no staging post of reference to the impact on other significant lives.

Morrison’s Lover.

…And all you wanted more than life

was to say you had slept with Jim Morrison,

it didn’t matter where or how, you just wanted that infamy,

the fame and glory, the smile of pleasure

the ring of tears when the camera pointed at you dressed in black

at the poet’s graveside, grieving but with a story to tell…

lots of stories to tell and not all of them yours to share.

 

You brushed hair in a certain style before I came round

knocking on the red wooden door, the only thing that

Kevin Critchley, Gig Review. Strings And Things, Studio 2, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Time is both cruel and unusual, as well being the well thought of great healer. It asks so much of us and in many ways offers so little in return. To be able to find time to watch all the great bands that come your way, that visit your nearest venue is an almost an impossible ask; to follow round every possible staging post one of the great young acts that the city has nurtured over the last few years is sadly unworkable in the modern age, to do deprives your attention from others, just as deserving, just as enjoyable, and yet when Kevin Critchley comes on stage, Time does its best to hold back the constant ticking.