Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
To capture the zeitgeist in times of warning and anguish is arguably a consideration of perfect observation and the draw of the artist’s vigilance, and one that must always be thought as beautiful as well as a study of the human condition.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We have got so used to the system that feeds off us, that we can no longer feel the pain of our mutual trauma, only the fear remains to guide and goad us on our collective ways. We have been caught singing for our daily bread by the proxy of mantra and found ourselves becoming addicted to the suffering we dearly need to dispense with if we are to return to a place of natural humanity.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Vincent Franklin, Eleanor Fanyinka, Nicola Stephenson, Nitin Ganatra, Bronagh Waugh, Miles Jupp, Lloyd Everitt, Andrew Brooke, Morgan Watkins, Krupa Pattani, Aneurin Barnard, John Stahl, Paul Hunter.
Many a lake and village pond hold a dark and terrible secret. On the surface what is seen is just the ripples caught by the wind or the thrown and skimmed stone, a gentleness of English countryside, the majesty of the Scottish Loch, is in fact a burial ground for the dead and the forgotten.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Arguably Doctor Who is at its best when it steers clear of the stars and takes its rightful place in the Victorian folk horror and the melodrama which accompanies it. After all, the era itself lends itself perfectly to the idea of the supernatural investigation, the race memory of what the destructive pursuit of empire has wrought in the landscape and the name of progress, and the terrors that have been faced by the aspirational working class as lives were pushed to limit, and the soul of humanity forsaken in the grabbing hands of capitalism, and the quest for the new Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.
Forget your dictators,
the tyrants,
stern judges with white wigs
upholding
ruthless laws,
for there is no greater power
than the mother
who insists
on ironing their teenage
son’s jeans
before they leave the house
on a date,
whilst he stands
in his underwear,
embarrassed
and hopping from foot to foot,
his vulnerability in front of authority
on show.
Ian D. Hall 2021
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
What was once fresh and novel to the ears can, in time, find itself to become languid and uninspiring. This is not always the fault of the artist, but instead how our senses manipulate the emotional response to anything that may appear to have lost the reason in which to surprise or even perhaps garner the thrill of the profoundly exciting.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It feels so long since we had the chance to see our surroundings that is reflected by the April Moon, that the clarity of the sky and horizon which comes before the heat haze of summer’s yearning takes over, is long overdue and deserving of acknowledgement and praise.
It is too early spring where the thoughts of renewal become clearer, more pronounced, the yearning for beauty after months of darkness and the bitter cold of human truth, is to where the artist’s mind must turn and for The Shadow Captain, it is the unveiling of his statuesque new album, April Moon.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, James D’Arcy, David Schofield, Carla Juri, Kevin Eldon, Nigel Lindsay, Rupert Holliday-Evans, Bianca Nawrath, Maria Dragus, Celyn Jones, Tijan Marei, Franziska Brandmeier, Joe Bone, Richard Elfyn, Nicole Kelleher, Maud Druine, Andrew Byron, Luisa-Celine Gaffron, Juliet Hartley, Toby Hadoke.
We like to think children and teenagers have become more sophisticated and more adapt in understanding how the world works, that in the way they can overcome technology and hold their own in conversation regarding ideas, they, like their adult counterparts, are still as susceptible to falling for the charms of fanaticism of any political persuasion, that the words of rhetoric can just be as much a thrill when spoken with the voice of authority, as the soft coercion holds the beauty of poetry aloft.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Adversity is the window of opportunity, even if at the time it does not feel as though it is possible because the glass is darkened and the catch is on, all you must remember is that you can break the glass, smash it as though you would your own fears, and then take the world on in the open air and with your own artistic weapon of choice.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Our paths once crossed and stories were exchanged, regardless of where we met, we followed the same discourse as set down by Chaucer and countless travellers before him who could weave a tale that made sense of the lives we inhabit and the structure of the world that gives us life.
Those paths, for now, seem blocked, a gate of silence has been put up in front of us and an injunction placed on our face-to-face spoken word; and yet the conversation can still flow, the meaning of our lives can still be performed, and as with all things, if they end up as a monologue, then at least the anecdote survives, the story lives on.