Category Archives: Music

Stevie Jones & The Wildfires, Stratigraphic Heart. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The diary seems to be a long forgotten art, relegated to history by the insistence of social media where the everyday action is calculated, commented up and then soon abandoned in the search for the next gratification hit. There is no build up, no harmony of what has happened before and no concern for what the words hastily written down and unchecked will bring. The diary has the appeal in the modern age of appointments rubbed out and the condensed form of language strung out.

Stevie Jones & The Wildfires, Stratigraphic Heart. Album Review. full post

(392 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Geoff Carne And The Hatz, Get Close. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In the modern age it seems that to get close to someone, to understand them and take a deep interest in their lives is almost the same as reducing yourself down to the level of some scurrilous gossip magazine or even be seen as intrusive. Contact must be made between people if we are to avoid being creatures afraid to come out from behind a computer driven persona, too scared of allowing the mask and guise of personality created by a social media hash tag, citizens of every country must find a way to Get Close once more and be seen to be someone who inhabits reason and rationale.

Geoff Carne And The Hatz, Get Close. Album Review. full post

(390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Anthrax, All The Kings. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Royalty is an outdated position of responsibility in the eyes of many, yet somehow we either cling to it out of deference to the past, to scared to go it alone and forge our own way of thinking, or we trust Government to become the new rulers and apply regulations and laws that we disagree with, one we can put their heads on a block, the other we just elect out; there is no middle ground.

Anthrax, All The Kings. Album Review. full post

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

Magnum, Sacred Blood, Divine Lies. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Divinity can come in many shapes or forms. Long since passed the days of it being the preserve of a religious practise or mystic observance, divinity is to be seen as how something makes you feel, how an artistic endeavour bleeds into your soul and takes on the world that beckons within your heart, mind and soul; certainly in recent years that sense of divine spirit, of captured Rock performance and total commitment to the rites of the union between song writer, musicians and vocalist have been placed before the Rock acolyte in the form of Magnum.

Magnum, Sacred Blood, Divine Lies. Album Review. full post

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

Hamish Napier, The River. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Slow and meandering, wistful, peaceful, ally, hindrance, roaring with thunder or verging on the edge of destructive impulse, whichever way you look at the river that runs closest to your home, it can be argued that it influences you more than you realise. Just as those who are fortunate to live by the sea feel the calm reassurance of the tides and the crash of the waves as they skim off layer after layer of rock, so too does The River place its timeless majesty into the heart of the community and for Hamish Napier, The River is the subject of an album that has all the attributes needed to make the person think just that little bit more about what shapes their lives.

Hamish Napier, The River. Album Review. full post

(411 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

The Fireflys, The Illumination Of Everything. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Enlightenment comes in many forms, it can be deafening, it can be as silent as the ghost of a wind travelling up a river estuary, the only ripple that can be discerned is that as the breeze ruffles the ears of corn or disturbs the water; enlightenment may suggest itself at that point where even if you didn’t feel the gust then all around you certainly did.

The Fireflys, The Illumination Of Everything. Album Review. full post

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

Rob Clarke And The Wooltones, Iron Eyes Cody. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

History rarely makes itself known, it just appears. The signs may be there, the historian may point to certain moments in which the realisation of what is occurring is shaped and polished, whatever the reason for history, in whatever shape or form, whether it is of enormous consequence or of the subtlety of change, the change will arguably not register world-wide but to whom the earthquake tremor reaches the sensitive and the symbol chaser.

Rob Clarke And The Wooltones, Iron Eyes Cody. Single Review. full post

(334 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Ben Poole, Time Has Come. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Brighton has long been thought of the most forward thinking and encouraging place for performers on the south coast of England for some time. Perhaps it could be seen as the Liverpool of the South, for it certainly has more in common with its Northern all encompassing metropolis of art than almost anywhere along the ridged line between the English Channel and the suburbs of the nation’s capital.

Ben Poole, Time Has Come. Album Review. full post

(445 words, 1 image, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Kafena, Lukanda Propaganda. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Travel, as the splendid maxim argues with total conviction, broadens the mind. If that is the case, then listening to music from another country in its own language should fill the soul to the point of bursting; each note hurtling a word filled with power and beauty into the musical arena and even if the phrase that is sung or the expression uncomprehending and perhaps meaningless, it still adds bounty to human experience.

Kafena, Lukanda Propaganda. Album Review. full post

(429 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

James Houlahan, Multitudes. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The revolution will not be screened, nor will it be probably felt across the board for years to come, however in the lush green lands of New England, in the corner of the world where the yoke of oppression first found a opponent whose anger was enough to strike out, the revolution will be heard and it will be dynamic as James Houlahan releases his third album, Multitudes.

James Houlahan, Multitudes. Album Review. full post

(393 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)