Category Archives: Music

Zoe Schwarz Blue Commotion, Exposed. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is the measure of a great talent that you can listen to an album that has been recorded somewhere in deep dark confines, where lights flash on and off and with no discernable pattern emerging except for those who understand these things and for whom the rest of us may as well be watching a futuristic science fiction film starring William Shatner. The music that is later heard from your C.D. player is one in which you can imagine fully having been painstakingly, lovingly and thankfully captured frame by frame, song by song and each bead of sweat that falls seductively from each of the musician’s brow able to tell its own tantalising story.

Zoe Schwarz Blue Commotion, Exposed. Album Review. full post

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

Hellion, Karma’s A Bitch. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You could be forgiven for thinking that Hellion had disappeared into the 21^st Century ether. Like many of their compatriots and contemporaries from what now seems like a time in which has been dwarfed by the subversion of music as a television entertainment procedure for advertising revenue rather than expression of deep down and dirty demands from a disenfranchised society, Hellion haven’t really hit the sweetest of spots in the genre of late.

All that should change with the release of their mini album, the outrageously good Karma’s A Bitch which is out this October.

Hellion, Karma’s A Bitch. Album Review. full post

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

Erja Lyytinen, The Sky Is Crying. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

One of the being alive in the 21^st Century is finding more and more music in which to take a certain degree of delight in. Not only in the extravagantly opulent amount of new songs paraded by people with something extraordinary fighting in their soul, the ones that refuse to lay down and take a metaphorical punching from successive people underestimating their age, their attitude, stance or particular opinion on a subject, but also in the fact that never before has so much been available from every decade, every century in which the combination of right tones, breathes and flickering beauty has been captured.

Erja Lyytinen, The Sky Is Crying. Album Review. full post

(542 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Modest Midget, Crysis. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Crisis! What Crisis? It may as well be the rallying call to what could at times be perceived as a beleaguered music industry, under pressure to constantly deliver in many cases the same sterile underwhelming stereotypical crass commercialism and in which makes the two ends of the spectrum just as much at fault as those who queue up and proclaiming it’s always been their dream to be a singer; possibly having had that dream since the first read that any of the many so called talent shows were going to be in town. On one side you have that, run by people who seem hell bent to destroy music from television’s side and then you have the likes of Bono and U2 giving their music away for nothing, well aside from the hefty cheque from online music fronts that is.

Modest Midget, Crysis. Album Review. full post

(499 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Grant Nicholas, Yorktown Heights. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You don’t have to go to Yorktown to hit the heights but to record a solo album full of instantly enjoyable songs, of tracks in which pathos, regret and hope go arm in arm and shove with purpose and some undisguised personal violence at the imagery of the past, then perhaps Yorktown Heights is the place in which solitude and rememberance are two adjoining emotions with a clear view of a possible future that lays ahead.

Grant Nicholas, Yorktown Heights. Album Review. full post

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

Sunjay. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is one way to describe the first aural sensation in which the ears hear the musical tones of Sunjay Brayne, one tiny word in which holds a myriad of thoughts, a single utterance in which musical confusion is dispelled and waved away like a fine mist is dispelled by the action of a fan, it is just simply marvellous.

Sunjay. Album Review. full post

(483 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Black Diamond, THE EP, Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are some things in life that should come with a cautionary sign attached them. Not the dangerous ones in which various pictures are plastered over the front of packaging and perforated with Government Surgeon General advice, not the kind in which Tipper Gore managed to spring load and foster fear over the corruption of young American minds and not the imaginary ones that should be written in paint over the front of polling stations which proclaim the words, Governments can seriously cause you stress but the ones that state loud and proud, “This C.D. will change the way you look at local music” or “Stop watching television, get out there and listen to this band, they will make you smile harder than rhinoceros armed with a gun and a poacher cowering on its knees.”

Black Diamond, THE EP, Review. full post

(416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Joanne Shaw Taylor, The Dirty Truth. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

For anybody who made their way to the Robin 2 about a decade ago, to catch sight of the talent that resided in Joanne Shaw Taylor must have been one of the biggest draws to ever come on stage in the small West Midland’s town of Bilston since The Robin 2 opened its doors. The Black Country and Birmingham soon grasped the importance of the outstanding woman who made the guitar sound like a spectre hunting down a soul to possess and whose charm and playing ability captivates all who come into contact with her.

Joanne Shaw Taylor, The Dirty Truth. Album Review. full post

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

Mr Big, …The Stories We Could Tell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

You can ask many things in life but asking the impossible is exactly that, something in which just you may as well lay down all your arguments and say, “Yes, just carry on and be magnificent, nobody will stop you telling your empowering and delicious tales.”

Mr Big, …The Stories We Could Tell. Album Review. full post

(479 words, 1 image, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Jonathan Markwood, Welcome To Planet Earth. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Sometimes you just have to sit back and listen to understand a person’s hopes, dreams, desires and fears. The casual conversation in a pub or coffee shop is fraught with dangers of misplaced cues, of half heard personal confessions and the fighting for the best story of the day, to get the true picture one needs look at the person in the face and listen. Whether it is in the form of spoken word or set to music, listening can get straight to the heart of the matter and perhaps makes for better reasoning.

Jonathan Markwood, Welcome To Planet Earth. Album Review. full post

(477 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)