Shetland: Series Six. Television Review.

Liverpool sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Douglas Henshall, Alison O’ Donnell, Steven Robertson, Mark Bonnar, Lewis Howden, Erin Armstrong, Anne Kidd, Fiona Bell, Neve McIntosh, Benny Young, Juie Brown, Jimmy Chisholm, Conor McCarry, Angus Miller, Cora Bissett, Stephen McCole, Kate Bracken, Thoren Ferguson, Andy Clark, Anneika Rose, Lewis Gribben, Sharif Dorani, Shonagh Price.

A pertinent question of the times, the ambiguity of morality, and the classic example of how low someone can stoop when they look to revenge; all this against the backdrop of island life in the shadow of murder, of the slow decline of the human mind, and the tensions that run high when an island’s life is supposedly threatened by a returning, and unwanted, soul.

Shetland: Series Six. Television Review. full post

(554 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Schattenmann, Chaos. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

One person’s chaos is another’s organised anarchy, and for the one who stands between the two states of being, it is the upheaval of the tornado of souls that scatters all life around them who can, for a while at least, appreciate the natural order of division.

Chaos, Schattenmann’s third studio album, is a combination of high intensity metal, but one delivered with the preciousness of steadfast observation in a world that requires tough love, but one that also feels that art and all its creativity is a finer way to show humanity and civilisation that quite often that what we perceive as chaos is actually continual revolution.

Schattenmann, Chaos. Album Review. full post

(338 words, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)

Paul Edis, The Still Point Of The Turning World. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We are forever being reminded that the world does not revolve around us, and yet in the same breath we are advised that if we do nothing, if we don’t believe in ourselves then what was the point in existence, where does the balance begin that those who wish to see people subservient to the whims of static corrosion and those that urge others to strike out and achieve all that they can, and where does it ultimately lead?

Paul Edis, The Still Point Of The Turning World. Album Review. full post

(375 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Cobra: Cyberwar. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Robert Carlyle, Victoria Hamilton, David Haig, Richard Dormer, Marsha Thomason, Lisa Palfrey, Edward Bennett, Lucy Cohu, Joshua Hogan, Grace Hogg-Robinson, Richard Pepple, Andrew Buchan, Neil Stuke, Alexa Davies, Karan Gill, Dipo Ola, Georgie Bingham, Michael Jibson.

When it comes to politics, art and life are so entwinned that it can be difficult to discern the difference, to understand where fiction and fact blur and merge, where the lines of personal ambition overlap the need of entertainment; only politics seems to play with its own creation, and like Frankenstein looming over the unfortunate being as he pushes electricity through its monstrous shaped body, the result is one of indisputable carnage and denial of responsibility.

Cobra: Cyberwar. Television Review. full post

(555 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Neil Campbell, The Great Escape. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To speak a language of love and sensuality without words is to acknowledge that poetry exists in many forms, that communication is not all down to verbal sound, and that human existence, human tragedy and joy don’t always need talking over.

To stand between silence and the projection of the voice is the sound of the instrumental, and in The Great Escape from ego and the uncomfortable, perhaps even muzzled, suppression of expression, there stands the influence and involved manifestation of the sound, the character of leaping into the unknown and eluding both ends of the spectrum, the silence and cacophony of the unfiltered human voice.

Neil Campbell, The Great Escape. Album Review. full post

(386 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Danny Bradley, Small Talk Songs. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Time takes Time, only when the moment is right does the Muse look at their watch, smile beguilingly at the sculptor of dreams and precision, and make good on the promise to aid in the delivery of what is seen as art, what is the final expression of doubt and the beginning of an eternal voice occupying its time in history.

Danny Bradley, Small Talk Songs. Album Review. full post

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

Paul Gilbert, Twas. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

You can’t escape Christmas, it is as inevitable as a political gesture, it is as demanding as a court summons, and for some the meaning has become blurred, lost, sacrificed to the ring of the till and the steady heartbeat beep of the transaction.

Perhaps such things were always there in the background, and so by contrast we have made the most of them, we have allowed the need to be replaced by want, that we are showing love through the showering of money, and not in the belief of the joy of artistic pursuit and the natural state of sharing a common endeavour of the sparkle, the glistening interaction afforded the time of year.

Paul Gilbert, Twas. Album Review. full post

(492 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

The Bordellos, Rock N Roll Is Dead. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Life is a risk. That is the whole point, we cannot sit safely on a high chair being force fed the bland and beige through a sterile tube, occasionally deliberating a thought that might be considered controversial if we pursue it to its logical end, and then dismissing it if it should cause more than a ripple of offence. The trouble is that we all want to be liked, and we all want to live in a world that is friendly; a world where the dull, the routine, and the boring, are greeted as though they are the ministers and saints that hold court in the land of the righteous and the new moral guardians.

The Bordellos, Rock N Roll Is Dead. E.P. Review. full post

(617 words, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

Peggy James, The Parade. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Being taken to The Parade is one of life’s absolute pleasures, you may only watch it take place, be the bystander in a crowd of thousands marvelling at the colour and sound as it fills the air and makes the senses run wild with excitement, but you will remember the procession forever, you will recall how small you felt in the face of the animated faces, how you held on to someone’s hand so that you wouldn’t get lost, you wouldn’t become part of the throng and the push of the convoy of exuberance and celebration.

Peggy James, The Parade. Album Review. full post

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

Jungle Cruise. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Jack Whitehall, Edgar Ramirez, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutiérrez, Dan Dargan Carter, Andy Nyman, Raphael Alejandro, Simone Lockhart, Pedro Lopez.

The adventurous romp, the quest for something more than we can conceive in the everyday avenue of life, has always been one to draw cinema crowds in to the darkened room, but it remains, it a post-Covid world, something that the producers of such films might have to look at with a finer eye if they are to keep the thrill of the chase paramount and not relegated to that of a mere show, of  whimsy without the necessary spectacle.

Jungle Cruise. Film Review. full post

(532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)