Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Alexander Hanson, Clive Rowe, Kevin Whately, Samantha Spiro, Shobna Gulati, Jenna Russell, Jane Bertish, David Rubin, Dylan Wood, Tessa Wong, Matthew Bose, Ben Godard.

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one…”

No matter how hard people within certain professions try, what they see whilst they are holding communities together, stopping cities from becoming zones overrun by fear, hate, damnation, they can never truly see the sparkle of a day without something reminding them that underneath it all the spectre of humanity’s more base instincts will rise to the surface and threaten to pour oil over small fires burning, will make any compulsion to sing one that becomes a mumble of forgotten promises in front of the paying audience.

Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review. full post

(538 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

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)

The Prisoner: Volume Three. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Mark Elstob, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Alicia Ambrose-Bayly, Jim Barclay, Richard Dixon, Barnaby Edwards, Genevieve Gaunt, Jennifer Healy, Lorelei King, Glen McCready, Sarah Mowat.

The price of losing your own individuality is more than you think, more than you can afford, and more than society can bear as the race for hegemony of all continues on with relentless pursuit and fearful dominance.

The Prisoner: Volume Three. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(508 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

Inside No.9.: The Last Weekend. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Sheila Reid.

“Beware the fury of a patient man”.

The question of how long and how far you would go in order to exact revenge on the one that destroyed you is one that is dangled before us in the darkness, perhaps whispered by a friend when the Devil is on their shoulder, the one who wants to know just how far you are prepared to go so they can either aid you, or have their statement and story ready when the police come knocking on their own door.

Inside No.9.: The Last Weekend. Television Review. full post

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

A Small Light. Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Bel Powley, Joe Cole, Live Schreiber, Billie Boullet, Ashley Brooke, Amira Casar, Ian McElhinney, Sally Messham, Andy Nyman, Nichlas Burns, Rudi Goodman, Caroline Katz, Liza Sadovy, Laurie Kynaston, Noah Taylor, Sebastian Armesto, Bill Milner, Sean Hart, Hanna Van Vliet, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jim High, Cosima Shaw, Tom Stourton, Daniel Donskoy, Dylan Edwards, Sarah T. Cohen, Vicki Pepperdine, Victor McGuire, Jeff Rawle.

A Small Light. Television Series Review. full post

(657 words, estimated 2:38 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)