Category Archives: Music

Rookery Ensemble: Islets of Langerhans. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

In a world that encourages the stilted and formal to be take on the mantle of leadership, it is the courage of the experimental to whom we should hail as directors, the spearheads in a campaign against the beige and obscenely dull.

There is a difference between searching for the novel form in which to instigate intrigue and attraction and that of the drastic manoeuvre in which the brash display their thoughts via the medium of promotion of self-illusion, of boasting through the art of conceit; one is an honest adventure, the other arguably a titillation for the audience of bluster and vanity.

Rookery Ensemble: Islets of Langerhans. Album Review. full post

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

Seeing Red: Keep The Fire Burning/Edzell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Whatever makes you feel passion, it is possible that you are Seeing Red.

There is a melancholic feeling that is understandable to all, even those that decry it, putting it down to self-indulgence, insisting it is a decadence, an unrestraint of emotions; to these we should ignore for they have forgotten what it means to feel, to hold love, to embrace pity, to acknowledge the luxury that is an demonstrative response to being human and all its misery and pleasures in equal measure.

Seeing Red: Keep The Fire Burning/Edzell. Album Review. full post

(395 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

The Bordellos: The Sunday Experience. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The Sunday Experience means different things to different age groups.

There are those to whom Sunday was steeped in a mystery of illusion, the world grinded on but for them it was still, the only movement detected was in the consistency of the gravy and the quickness of the finger as you pressed play/record on the tape deck to catch the latest hits surfacing around the top forty.

The Bordellos: The Sunday Experience. E.P. Review. full post

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

Black Star Riders: Wrong Side Of Paradise. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The world we know is crumbling, and whilst that may be a scenario, a reality in which many will find scary, daunting to contemplate, a measure of the forbidden exercise in relinquishing control, what lays beyond the so-called Wrong Side Of Paradise is not the Hell that Milton warned of, but perhaps the realisation that nothing can be as bad, as desperate, or as incendiary as what we refuse to see as our own inferno.

Black Star Riders: Wrong Side Of Paradise. Album Review. full post

(426 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Paul Carrack & The SWR Big Band: Don’t Wait Too Long. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Timing is everything in life; you can be the finest example of what you do, but if you mistime the moment then it is to be argued that the opportunity to leave your name etched in stone will be lost, and sand might be the only place in which your epitaph will appear.

Knowing the right moment is key, Don’t Wait Too Long to show the world just exactly how your thoughts, imagination and dreams have combined to spark something beautiful, something everlasting, a piece of art that is not only cool, but considered, full of emotional drama, a moment of fierce belief wrapped in the calm understanding of having struck a home run in front of a cheering crowd when the chips looked down.

Paul Carrack & The SWR Big Band: Don’t Wait Too Long. Album Review. full post

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

Elijah James And The Nightmares: Man In The Diner. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The Nighthawks await, silent, unmoving, an Edward Hopper painting capturing the solitude of modern life in the twilight and given a 21st Century aural theme, that is the sheer depth of illumination to be found as the listener is introduced to the Man In The Diner by Elijah James And The Nightmares; the difference being as Hopper’s painting has gained importance for its stagnation in the past, whilst still being hugely relevant, what the band implores is life, existence beyond the one dimensional, and in full glorious colour the man alone in the diner becomes all too real – he becomes the embodiment of us.

Elijah James And The Nightmares: Man In The Diner. Single Review. full post

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

UFO: No Heavy Petting. Album Review. (Reissue 2023).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

No Heavy Petting, but surely a deep embrace for old times, a sweeping kiss gently placed on the brow, and the firm handshake of recognition that accompanies the hearty grin; a rerelease, expanded, given even more oomph, and one that places UFO in the realm of best heavy rock/ proto metal bands of all time.

UFO: No Heavy Petting. Album Review. (Reissue 2023). full post

(458 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Sam Brown: Number 8. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When a voice goes, we perhaps dismiss the person to whom it belongs. We might not purposely ignore the human being to whom the words have failed, but we certainly find a way to cast their whole being into a kind of purgatory, a lost and found for the once held in virtue.

Such an action says more about us as a society than it will ever do about the individual; we are not only quick to judge, but we are complicit in keeping the person, the artist, the voice lacking strength but not integrity, quiet.

Sam Brown: Number 8. Album Review. full post

(571 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

Gareth Heesom: Ever See. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

All that you ever saw, all that was lost to time as memories jostle for attention like moths dancing awkwardly around an orange light, some who have their wings singed as they fluttered greedily towards the light, some that find they can only catch the light on occasion as they slowly begin to fade and become forgotten in the dark…all that you will Ever See, is what remains when love and time collide to create the art we hold close to our hearts.

Gareth Heesom: Ever See. Single Review. full post

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

Quarry: Positioning The Sun. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

No matter where we find the best place to be seen Positioning The Sun, we must make sure that the no shadows can be observed spoiling the view; they can enhance it, add a flavour, texture, a sense of the dramatic and illusion, but the view must never be soiled for the want of darkness in the wrong and unwanted place.

Quarry: Positioning The Sun. Album Review. full post

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