Category Archives: Music

Beans On Toast, Knee Deep In Nostalgia/The Unforeseeable Future. Album Reviews.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Rarely do we get to even get to place ourselves in someone else’s shoes, let alone to see out of the eyes of mythical gods and deities, but for the first time in decades we perhaps can have an inkling of true empathy for another’s suffering, that like the Roman god Janus, we can see the beginnings of our trials and the transition we have undergone as both sides of the divide yearn for melancholy longing and are concerned over what the prospect of tomorrow will bring.

Beans On Toast, Knee Deep In Nostalgia/The Unforeseeable Future. Album Reviews. full post

(546 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Tarkus The Henge, Luna Park! Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Free thought, it is a priceless commodity to be able to utilise, to experience, to shape your own life, whilst hopefully offering a glimmer of spirit to anyone who watches you live your life for a while. Whilst thought should always be free, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t come without a bill to be paid, a payment in kind if certain political ideologies invade, infest, and desecrate the belief that the artist is not worth the same respect as anyone who strives away in the darkness before unveiling the light that inspires for all.

Tarkus The Henge, Luna Park! Album Review. full post

(442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Jonathan Markwood Hoo-Hah Conspiracy, Real Or Imagined. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There will always be those that see life as a strict application of black and white, they dismiss the abstract because as far as they are concerned there is only one way to exist and they will happily tell others that they need to get a real life, to be sensible, to be part of the machine; they believe that you can only be happy if you ignore the creative and the imagined, that to have a fantasy is a waste of time.

Jonathan Markwood Hoo-Hah Conspiracy, Real Or Imagined. Album Review. full post

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

Ocean Hills, Santa Monica. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Experience counts, yes you can create a masterpiece without having lived, loved and seized the day by the appropriate metaphor, but the one thing such as classic will always arguably be short of one important factor, the familiarity of existence and having shook hands with demons and angels alike.

Ocean Hills’ Santa Monica is a case in point of how experience can bring out the best in art, offering the listener a snapshot of your life but infusing a belief of fluency to which they were not originally part of; it is the immersive nature of Zoli Teglas and the musicians around him that make this album not only sing a song of awareness, but of know-how, of knowledge and wisdom.

Ocean Hills, Santa Monica. Album Review. full post

(374 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Sinead McConville & D Cullen, Christmas Ain’t The Same (Miles and Miles Away). Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is no escaping the fact that this year will go down in history as one of the most exhausting, perhaps demanding years of anyone’s life, certainly as a society in the Western world which aside from brief or continued acts of terrorism, aside from natural disasters, have arguably been untouched by any disturbance to the Christmas celebration since World War Two.

Even then we were perhaps fortunate, and have been certainly ever since, that Christmas, that time of year where the misty eyed traditionalist and the loved up optimist shake hands and regale the world with stories and emotion, whilst all around the sound of tills have rang out merrily and in tune to the consumerist drive.

Sinead McConville & D Cullen, Christmas Ain’t The Same (Miles and Miles Away). Single Review. full post

(491 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

Shy Girl, Alias. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

The appearance and aroma of toxicity is in all of us, across the gender divide, across political division, through class, culture and philosophy, even if we preach and display idealism, compassion, empathy, in some small way we are capable of being the most toxic person in a room at one time or another.

Such is the depth of our personality, the understanding that we are more than just a single line joke delivered by the eternal jester, that we are complex and complicated, that we are capable of beautiful highs, and intolerable lows, and that in someone else’s story, we are the villain given many names, “There is such and such, Alias The Devil“.

Shy Girl, Alias. E.P. Review. full post

(408 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Beth Lee, Waiting On You Tonight. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We are worth so much more than being the idle thought of those that caused our hearts to break, after all is said and done, the only person that can truly destroy us emotionally, is ourselves.

Stepping away from The Breakups for a while as she explores her current surroundings and delves further into her own solo story, Beth Lee opens up her soul to a new kind of love, the selfless self-love to which we must all embrace if we are being to true to ourselves, the solitude of confinement in which we learn the ultimate truth of our existence and how it drives us to avoid falling into the lap of heartbreak again.

Beth Lee, Waiting On You Tonight. Album Review. full post

(367 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Eyes Of Tomorrow, Settle For More. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Having an attitude is not only essential but indispensable to having your story, your life, being expressed in the right way. There is no relief to be found in being meek even if you inherit the world and the wind, only the damage that timidity and mild voice can bring; nobody should reconcile for less, no one should settle for less than they are worth, Settle For More, demand that your voice be heard at all times.

Eyes Of Tomorrow, Settle For More. Album Review. full post

(374 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Death Dealer, Conquered Lands. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

A conquered land is one that has been taken by force, the image of desolation, of pillage, fires burning, its people scattered, perhaps laid waste, uncertain if their way of life will ever return, held hostage by the loss and despair and the knowledge that their lives will never be the same again.

Death Dealer, Conquered Lands. Album Review. full post

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

Yvonne Lyon, Growing Wild. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision 8.5/10

When you are young, when adult authority perhaps means something, the pointed finger and verbal accusation of Growing Wild was one that might make you stop and think, careful not to upset those that mean something to you, you rein in the storm, you prune back the excess, as one would a garden allowed to spread out of control, and you restore the balance of contentment. The trouble is you then deny yourself the chance to be the storm that changes the landscape, you become part of the background in which everybody is the same, you don’t blossom into the natural you.

Yvonne Lyon, Growing Wild. Album Review. full post

(409 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)