Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is no doubting that many artists do put a lot of thought into the naming of a body of work, some though leave you scratching your head as if the meaning is lost, perhaps even translated wrong between your language and the utter gibberish that has placed itself onto the sleeve as if waiting for someone, anyone, to get the joke.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Listening to The Theme’s Hits The Sky, the feeling of infectious delight washes over you to the point where you have to start looking through the yellow pages or asking your G.P. where the nearest place is to share the sheer joy of listening to one of the most remarkable bands to come out of the London area in many years.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When it comes to a voice, one that shoots straight like a burning arrow through the defences of the unexpected and the unfashionably unknowing, Chelsey Chambers has the route from bow to target mapped out and is swift in the delivery.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You have only to listen to Three Minute Hero to know that inside the man sits the heart of socially aware human being, a person of intrigue and one who knows the intricate nature of penning a song which is both catchy, to any genre lover, and one that has a huge point riding along just underneath the sense of sound, one that asks a question of the listeners.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Chicago is a city built on several distinct sounds, the echoes of the past at times which reverberate and regurgitate over and over again, a beautiful, vibrant city but one caught arguably in its own musical demise and with only a few choice new names brave enough to try and tear that down.
Ryk Mead & The London Blues Band’s Chicago on the other hand is a place filled with opportunity in which 11 songs offer a fresh almost tantalising sound of innate pleasure and in which, whilst steeped in the Blues, is not overawed by the past association of a genre that has stepped out of its own terminal pre-21st shadow and become a vivacious and almost flamboyant beauty once more.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Six albums down the line and Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip Ain’t Bad Yet, and listening to the new offering from the Finnish Royal Blues family, there is no reason to ever believe that they would ever have that moniker attached to them.
Ain’t Bad Yet is an album of great masculine sensitivity but with that hugely desired effect in Blues, one of sheer guts and magnitude, enough of the former to deliver yet another sharply focused piece of writing, more than plenty in the latter to hold the responsibility along with many of the bands Nordic neighbours of keeping the Scandinavian music renaissance of the last decade going and in style.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The conviction in anybody’s voice when they declare themselves to be completely sure of themselves is as heartening to hear as it is desperate to hear the soft, perhaps muted and terrified cries of someone who proclaims to the world that they are lost. Whether in spirit, direction or in purpose, that sense of loss, of sole grief at the way that Time has at being erased is as palpable an experience to sit and listen to as the joy that one who has always known their purpose was to entertain and enthral gives the listener.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The 100 Club in London may be the scene of many a clandestine gig that has caught the music lovers of the city unawares over the years but one name certainly caught the attention of the audience when she performed there. Thankfully now it is a gig that can be heard for what it was in the new release, Live In London, one of sublime entertainment and guitar to fuel the passion of 21st Century Blues whilst paying homage to the true greats of the previous century.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is something uniquely special about the great American steel town of Pittsburgh, nestled alongside a river as imposing to look at from above as the Mersey, Tyne or the Thames. The richness of the area is to be seen in its culture, historical links to almost every momentous occasion in the United States and the ties that made it a place to covet both during the wars between both sides of the independence debate and that between America’s soul of the Civil war.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It’s not a sound a listener might expect to have come from the gateway to the west, a city that is more in touch arguably with the Chicago Blues, heavy rock, the sound of Jazz and Gospel naturally permeate the city skyline and the luminance of Robert Lamm and the brilliance of Peter Cetera hang heavy over the city’s past and possibly the future. Yet for Chicago-based JoyFocus the sound that weaves its way through the past like a hi-speed chase involving a one armed man and an irate and falsely accused Doctor is both invigorating and encompassing.