Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
At times in life, a diversion is needed to take the subtle agony of the daily grind away, a sense of humour keen and required to withstand even the most arduous of days and if not for love, humour would have no way of being reigned in from being nothing more than cruel and absurd.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Helen Anderson, Lisa Bird, Eva Bell, Andrew Bone, Ed Brody, Phil Cheadle, Kit Lessner, Marianne Oldham, Robert Styles, Eleanor Thorn, Rosie Wyatt, Javez Cheeseman, Colby Mulgrew.
Some pieces of literature are perhaps arguably not intended to be envisigned in anything other than cinema’s light, some perhaps are so sensitive that to try and show that singular emotion on the stage is to invite crass remarks and tactlessness in return.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The art of the documentary is to give you a glimpse into a world that you may never have imagined being drawn into. To step so far out of your comfort zone, to truly take in what is being said about a subject that you may have absolutely no interest in whatsoever and to give you an appreciation, a glimmering of insight and comprehension in the complex lives of others. It is to thank inwardly the documentary makers for their diligence; even if at the end of it you are still none the wiser for the fascination of said subject.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In adversity comes the greatest of challenges, to overcome adversity twice, albeit for two very different reasons is a mark of greatness. There never really should be any doubt that Blancmange bring a mark of greatness to the table that cannot be fully appreciated unless you took the band for the every word in the respective periods they have come to be associated with. Two eras separated by time, by complication and inconvenience and exemplified wonderfully by the new album, Semi Detached.
…With one last roar of bitterness and pain,
King March lets go, of his life as he knew it,
of everything that went before and understood
Lord Tiresias’ wise words
that were concerned with pleasure.
“Pleasure, not this agony of Regal state in which
My subjects below me run into shadows, hide in corners
and bow to me because I force them too, because
I am damned to always believe them to be
nothing more than baseless, they do not understand the
relating pressure I feel as lord of this once
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickland, Annette Badland, Nickolas Grace, Joanna Kirkland, John Albasiny, Ella Kenion.
E-Space has ensnared The Doctor. Thanks to the mechanical, mathematic genius mind of the now dead Adric, the Doctor in his fifth incarnation and his three young companions are cut adrift from the Universe and with little hope of finding their way back, it seems as though their stay in E-Space will become a lengthy and unbalanced one.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It’s not often Liverpool has a member of the prestigious Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame within its midst. The rare occurrence, as uncommon as the sight of solar eclipse without it being obscured by both dark threatening clouds and forethought in positional judgement, is one that should be relished. In Liverpool terms it is like going across to Nashville and finding the great Pete Wylie delivering a monumental set to wild enthusiastic Country music lovers, it is a set many in the city would dearly love to happen for the auspicious and celebrated lover of Merseyside.
Me and Deboe, Threshold 2015. Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
To perform in unison when the weather is perfect is to be expected. To perform with an air of gliding ease indoors with the natural ambiance afforded to you, and the audience smiling with a sense of satisfaction, that is almost a given.
Jo Bywater, Threshold 2015, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Jo Bywater stands aloft on the stage at Constellations and the world feels as though it is about to shift, quake and feel the pressure of talented guitar fury. To be fair to Ms. Bywater, whichever stage she graces, that same feeling emanates from the tips of her fingers to the assembled crowd, it is not new but it is surely immensely powerful and as part of the fifth year of Threshold, that guitar fury, not thrashed, not beaten, just quiet reflective anger but held in a song which sounds as sweet as the first drops of rain after a long protracted drought, is as needed as the very act of breathing, it is a Liverpool soul.
Three Minute Hero. Threshold 2015, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Stuart Todd may go by the name of Three Minute Hero but this conscious driven musician is no flash in the pan, no three minute wonder when it comes to delivering songs with social bite and society angst. Every city, every market place in every village, town centre or urban conurbation deserves someone like Three Minute Hero, someone to whom the maverick town crier can be held up as an example to, not delivering news to the masses which has been scripted, shaped and fawned over by ministers and their collected yes men, but the ideas and truth of what we have in place.