Category Archives: Music

Beverley Craven: Memories (The Complete Epic Recordings 1990-1999). Album Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We thankfully live in age where we can place our thoughts of a creative’s art with informed insight as they delve into their back catalogue and remind, through combined packaging and box sets, of their journey, their exploration of their individuality and dreams, their sound as they honed expression and voice in such a way that does not immediately become clear when listening, in music’s sense, to a single album and then another perhaps a few weeks later.

Beverley Craven: Memories (The Complete Epic Recordings 1990-1999). Album Box Set Review. full post

(486 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Steely Dan: Countdown To Ecstasy. Album Review. (2023 Reissue).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To look back at an album, at any piece of art, and declare it to be prophetic, is to ascribe meaning to a moment uttered and echoed though out time by our own perceived belief of how the world has turned out.

Yet, with that said, future insight is a skill of mindful endurance, of being able to assign certain scenarios to current news item and allowing the imagination to flow unabated by personal feeling to produce what could be the eventuality, the final piece of the puzzle and presenting in such a way that it has the voyeur of the art being committed to open suggestion that it was always meant to be.

Steely Dan: Countdown To Ecstasy. Album Review. (2023 Reissue). full post

(494 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Gentle Giant: Interview. Album Re-release Review. (2023).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Progressive Rock is a spirited animal that deserves its freedom, but the art of the concept is such that it requires gentle nurturing by band and listener alike.

In the last decade more seminal bands from the golden period of the genre have found a way to have their voice reheard; early Jethro Tull have benefitted greatly from such a move, King Crimson, Yes, Gentle Giant, Rush, and even Marillion have been given the treatment of renewal, and it is perhaps down to the prodigious work by one of the modern greats of the genre, Steven Wilson, that the music of a time when all could be Kings, is being once again revered and lauded for the intensity and thought it once held aloft.

Gentle Giant: Interview. Album Re-release Review. (2023). full post

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

Bibby: Every Day. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To wake with a song in your heart is beautiful, to feel it return Every Day is nothing short of a miracle, one that we need to embrace more by taking apart all that threatens our equilibrium and our sanity.

Start the day with a voice that pleases, herald the dawn with a sense of music that gives pleasure, and tackle the foes who ground our mental health down with wave after wave of new songs that spur the imagination and refuse to let us begrudge the past, only add to it, give it texture and flavour that gives the day a sense of the hopeful eternal.

Bibby: Every Day. E.P. Review. full post

(362 words, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Graham Nash: Now. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We have become embroiled and entrenched in the moment. Our capacity for concentration has diminished, our long terms goals have been reduced to the short-term win; everything we have as a species worked towards has been placed in chaos by the appearance of not being able to see beyond the present minute, from some living in the now and not the forever.

Graham Nash: Now. Album Review. full post

(455 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Yes: Mirror To The Sky. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Time is the great leveller, and yet in some cases we have found ways to observe the continuation of that which would have once slowly faded away. Indeed, such is the pulse of various music artists, or groups, we can now witness the possibility of such longevity that a band could feasibly live on in one form or another indefinitely. 

Art is meant to outlive the artist, that is the sacrifice of the human soul as it creates from dust that which fascinates long after the illustrator of the human expression has left this mortal coil for the next adventure.

Yes: Mirror To The Sky. Album Review. full post

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

Roger Powell: Blue Note Ridge. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Whist many insist melancholy is the abuse of suffering by the individual, for some it is the arguable truth that it acts as more of a progression to motivation than that captured by the belief of utopia. Utopia may be the ultimate dream, but to get there you must understand that the beauty in your possession is a symbol of the everyday release of expression that comes from allowing the soul to search for the serenity gifted by the melancholic memory.

Roger Powell: Blue Note Ridge. Album Review. full post

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

A Man Called Adam: The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart is one in need of attention, that requires care and nurturing, for the hole could be a void, it could be the missing part that makes her see the world with a different mindset, and one only cured by listening to her voice as she allows those feelings to escape, to flood the body with the love she has always wanted to share with another soul.

That sense of sharing, of offering, comes thick and fast in the brand-new album from the electronica legends, A Man Called Adam.

A Man Called Adam: The Girl With A Hole In Her Heart. Album Review. full post

(432 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Gareth Heesom: The Way You Look At Me. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We all want that moment, be it for a brief period in our lives, or if we are fortunate, a sense of relief that lasts years, even a lifetime. There is no emotional satisfaction that comes close, no gut-wrenching honesty that survives and offers hope than when you can say to someone who loves you that “The Way You Look At Me” makes me want to be a better person.

Gareth Heesom: The Way You Look At Me. Single Review. full post

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

Peter Cox: Seaglass. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We are glass shaped by time rather than the permanent waves of water that pound the debris of celebration into shape; and yet if we are fortunate, we end up the same, we are smoothed, levelled, and in rounded into shape of that which can best serve humanity rather than being the image of the rutted an craggy, the sharp end which cuts and slices into the flesh of others as we walk over them, as we leave an imprint of desperation on the shores of time.

Peter Cox: Seaglass. Album Review. full post

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