Category Archives: Music

Martyn Joseph: Troubled Horses. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Concentration and a singular vision of focus is often the key to strength in delivering purpose, few in today’s bright lights and multitude of distractions can go a certain length of time without the desire to be pulled away, to glimpse what is outside of the bubble they wish to dedicate a sense of commitment to in which to achieve greatness or at least a weight of fulfilment with honour.

The Annie Keating Band: Live. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Annie Keating deserves the attention of the majority of music lovers, the best of the unknown warrior to whom the weapon of guitar and lyrical drama can bring forth sparks and the sound of ancient fought battles and then just as easily, just as candidly, wrap the resulting combat in clothes of purity and the essence of serene culture and belief.

The Brooklyn based singer songwriter, whose studio albums have included the superb Bristol Country Tides, Make Believing, and the sublime Hard Frost, seeks to exemplify her soul’s desire by releasing in the sense of the raw and guided pleasure – The Annie Keating Band: Live recording.

Various Artists: Too Many Roads (Restless Hearts Covered). Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Well told stories never end, they find ways to adapt, to reach out with greater intensity and love, their emotions heightened by the continual appreciation and the way that others interpret the tale for others to hold on to and spread the word. If only we could all hold that type of power, that sense of engaged passion that others seek out, and for one of Liverpool’s most elegantly gifted songwriters, John Jenkins, his latest album, released in July, sees a wonderfully creative adaption conceived by the equally respected Jim Pearson, unveiled.

Jonathan Markwood’s Hoo-Hah Conspiracy: St. Milburga’s Well. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The well of inspiration never runs dry if we are able to manage the expectation of quality and quantity to its full potential, we can draw upon it for all our life, watering our surroundings, nourishing our soul, feeding us that which spurs into action when we wish to consider art is above all and bathe in its beauty.

Genesis: Six Sides Live Volume 2 – The Complete Knebworth 1992 Broadcast. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In 1992, Genesis were one of the biggest acts around, each member had their own success to varying degrees, and even their former guitarist and leading frontman were a force to be reckoned with; they could do no wrong, and on the back of their 1991 release of We Can’t Dance, it was only inevitable that at some point the three main members of Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks, would go all out and record at least one concert on the tour.  It is perhaps with serendipity that the one released took place in the high summer, an August day filled with the possibility of being iconic, of being amongst the finest captured event since their most prominent gig since Wembley in 1987.

Alun Parry: Invisible People. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To declare a finest achievement in a career that has been consistently sharp and forthright, is to perhaps rattle the soul of fortune, for few are comfortable with such an accolade, but is the preserve of the listener to affirm in their mind and state such an admiration for the artist.

Liverpool’s Alun Parry has once more returned with an album of such immensity that the socially conscious troubadour hits home with every ounce of its being, and in Invisible People’s very essence that sense of observation in the ordinary person, left out, abused by political dogma and the ever-increasing thought of isolation that has come our way through systematic exploitation of our thoughts and the violence within.

Toyah: Chameleon: The Very Best Of Toyah. Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

From humble beginnings of a young girl from Kings Heath in Birmingham, the rebellious nature shone through early with acts that thrill the heart such as setting off a multitude of clocks from underneath the stage of her school that disrupted a speech from the then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher, and which led rightly to her being hailed within a few short years as the Queen of the British Punk movement.

Joseph Houck: Blue Ridge Mountain Waterfalls. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We are in danger of losing a vital part of our humanity, what makes us special as a species; not just losing, but actively, with shame, almost insisting with every fibre in our being that Art of any shade serves no purpose to the human condition, that we cannot strive forward if we cling to the notion that we gain nothing from the world if we give it beauty, if we place emotion where absolute logic should be.

The Far West: Everything We Thought We Wanted. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Everything we ever believed we desired has arguably turned sour, the so-called Post War dream has more than begun to resemble a nightmare, and the world, once drenched in the fine ideas of change and the hopes of 1960s counterculture, has become a liquid fire, a mantra of dissolution and despondency.

It’s Karma It’s Cool: Goliath. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We take a slingshot at life in the hope that it will bring down giants and monsters in our path, forever the underdog, we could end up being the unlikely winner in a game that we didn’t sign up for but which has left us with little choice but to outfox those who stand in our way and stand tall as their shadow looms over the proceedings, and for some, for those who see Karma as a weapon of truth then the slings afforded us are positive grooves in which to beat any Goliath with.