Category Archives: Music

Queen + Adam Lambert, Live Around The World. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The cries of targeted derision are heard, the whispers will continue, that it’s just not Freddie up there on stage, pushing the crowd on, cajoling, entertaining, enticing, flirting at every opportunity, and in fairness they are right, it isn’t Freddie Mercury, the symbolic frontman who wowed Wembley in 1985, it isn’t the vocalist who brough tracks such as Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You to life as crowds gathered in Budapest, Maine Road or The Rainbow, but nobody ever will be, and that is the point, Queen lives on and despite everything that could have gone against them, all the publications and those who decided they were finished, the truth is Roger Taylor and Brian May, along with the exuberant and funny, the dashing and the playful Adam Lambert have created an energy, that may not be quite what you want to hear, but is certainly what you need to experience.

Queen + Adam Lambert, Live Around The World. Album Review. full post

(597 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Hollis Brown, In The Aftermath. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

If you are going to make a statement then it must be done with absolute conviction, it must startle the recipient, it must oblige the senses in to feeling the seismic change in shift and balance that accompanies the natural and the atypical alike; for only In The Aftermath can we see the devastation and witness the rebirth of cool, of groove, and of brilliance.

Hollis Brown, In The Aftermath. Album Review. full post

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

Pet Needs, Fractured Party Music. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Punk never died, but it is fairly obvious that someone thought it could be packaged, stamped, and sold as the music for all, when the truth is it sits in the soul of the fractured, the damaged, the creative, and the doggedly unrepentant as a singularity, as an offering to the mind that cannot, or will not be tamed, the mind that knows that anger, as John Lydon was to remark, is an energy, one that is constant and driven by the view of the world that refuses to be bought.

Pet Needs, Fractured Party Music. Album Review. full post

(480 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Katie Henry, On My Way. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Once you have taken the High Road, all there is to do is phone ahead and notify every one of your progress and confirm detours and deviations aside, that you are on your way.

The journey is one to savour, the sense of ticking off the various mile posts, researching the beauty spots along the way, relishing the company or the solitude which inspires the senses, and then when you reach the next motel, the pit stops where the heart and soul write down all they have experienced, and only then does the phrase On My Way hold the gravitas that such a declaration deserves.

Katie Henry, On My Way. Album Review. full post

(439 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

The Anix, Revenge. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Revenge is a dish that is best served evolved. The long game is a skill that few in the 21st Century want to seem to embrace or master, everything is about the immediate, the now, and whilst that in itself is laudable, whilst it is understandable that all who seek fulfilment and their voice to be heard strike whilst the iron is scorching, to truly feel as though their ire and desires are best catered to, the long game, the sense of brooding, the development of the plan in which to gain vengeance is one that is finer tuned, one that has a chance of succeeding rather than crashing out as the evidence points to you alone.

The Anix, Revenge. Album Review. full post

(447 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Cal Ruddy, The Edenhurst Session. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The essence of art is in the shrouded mystery that precedes the reveal, for until it makes itself public, till it is announced with either flourish and fanfare, or tentatively, shyly with as much belief but without the certainty of reception, it is an enigma that heeds only to the performer’s mind, the imagination that seeks release from the shadow, but also is content to hide a while, almost dictate the timing of its release and away from the will of the artist at large; a session released with glee.

Cal Ruddy, The Edenhurst Session. E.P. Review. full post

(421 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Oui Plastique, Fraternity Of Strangers. Album Listen.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Sometimes the brother and sisterhood that you felt safe within fails to show up, occasionally the sense of being cut adrift by those you considered family is so overwhelming that you question your feelings, your reality, the years you have put in and the ear you always offered them; so much so, that the Fraternity Of Strangers will become the company in which you will be more welcome at, more in tune with from the get go.

Oui Plastique, Fraternity Of Strangers. Album Listen. full post

(363 words, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Dymytry, Revolt. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Revolt, not so much an instruction passed down from history, but a demand when faced with on-going, never relenting, tyranny; it is the mandate of all peoples to scream it from the top of their voices at their governments, at their leaders, the oppressors, the tinpot dictator and autocrat alike, that the human spirit has a voice, that it can be heard, and it must delivered with righteous anger, with a growl of discontent that can at any moment become a burning flame on the lawns of the so called masters.

Dymytry, Revolt. Album Review. full post

(382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Steve Vai, Inviolate. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There is no greater agency that does you harm than that of inaction and listening to those thoughts you cannot name. In silence we wound ourselves, we seek the solace of the shadow and see harm as a way of life, of being caught in the crossfire of personal responsive violence towards our own soul, and the target placed on our back by the spoiled view, of the attack by the contaminated disposition.

Steve Vai, Inviolate. Album Review. full post

(433 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Ben Sures, The Story That Lived Here. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The mind is more than just an organic machine residing in a structured collection of a bag of bones, it is the home of all our tales, the holding place for all the anecdotes, the comfortable legends in which we revel. The fictions that justify our actions, the rumours unfound and the narratives to the silent film of our existence, the mind is the safe in which The Story That Lived Here can be relived, explored, added to without anyone knowing that the script had been altered to make us look more of the hero than the villain.

Ben Sures, The Story That Lived Here. Album Review. full post

(461 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)