The Liminanas, I’ve Got Trouble In Mind Vol 2. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10


The world is obsessed with the idea of new, not fresh, not innovative, not original, just new. New is the catch-all modern step over the boundary, it implies edginess, when all that is being adorned is shock value, it suggests a tense unease at the revolution to come, yet the same colours are always to be seen flying from the mast at the break of day and at sunset. It feels as if it should agitate and stir things up, an insurrection in the novel, and yet new in this world is concerned with rampant commercialism and is only really a different package to sell the same thing you have had in your hands for the whole of your life.

The Liminanas, I’ve Got Trouble In Mind Vol 2. Album Review. full post

(394 words, 1 image, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Holiday Gunfire. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Only the more seasoned music lovers will truly remember the sheer exuberance the body and soul felt when they first came across seminal British band The Who, those of us who came to hear and love the foursome afterwards, perhaps what may be considered long after the fact can only guess, hopefully perceive, what it meant to have such a group join the ranks of 60s British luminaries as The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones.

Holiday Gunfire. Album Review. full post

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

The Brother’s Gillespie, The Fell. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Close siblings with the same measured response to nature and art just seem to ally themselves perfectly to the sense of harmony that is sought after by all; whether it is the fields, the woods or within the reach of an open window as the countryside calls out to humanity to care for the environment, harmony is what we seek, and if it comes in the form of two human beings making music and the purity of vocal then that is the start of something beautiful.

The Brother’s Gillespie, The Fell. Album Review. full post

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

Georges Simenon, Pietr The Latvian: Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

As introductions to a character go, the iconic French detective Maigret arguably could not have been delivered at a more timely moment, nor could Georges Simenon captured the essence of a decent man’s life when Europe was finding itself enveloped in the dark times to come, the shadow of one war had not truly been lifted, and the prospect of another, more deadly, more devastating than any other before it, loomed on the horizon.

Georges Simenon, Pietr The Latvian: Book Review. full post

(462 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Black Lake (Series Two). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Hedda Stiernstedt, Filip Berg, Daniel Larsson, David Nzinga, Bahar Pars, Alida Morberg, Andre Ericksen, Ester Udden, Anja Landgre.

When the makers of a serial decide in their infinite wisdom to take a story back before the events in which made their original premise a success, they leave themselves open to the kind of questions that would not befall them had they carried forth from the moment in which the initial resolution had been created.

Black Lake (Series Two). Television Review. full post

(317 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

Trapper Schoepp, Primetime Illusion. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The best of art arguably comes out of despair, damage or dysfunction, the most memorable of music is born in a place of darkness and heartfelt.  The open-eyed realisation that what was once a beautiful paradise is now a place in which distress grows, only alleviated in its promise to pull you under by the sound which captures the imagination and shows both the artist and the listener that there is light that can be seen to pulse wildly out of the sinister and sombre thoughts.

Trapper Schoepp, Primetime Illusion. Album Review. full post

(420 words, 1 image, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Magnum: Live At The Symphony Hall, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

What a night it was, one that perhaps might never have happened, one that was threatened by the Beast from the East a few weeks earlier and caused issues amongst those who were cornered by the worst snow to hit Birmingham for a generation; even the nearby statue, the so called Floozie in the Jacuzzi would have shed a thousand frozen tears to see the pity of a cancelled gig in the spiritual home of one the country’s leading Rock bands.

Magnum: Live At The Symphony Hall, Album Review. full post

(546 words, 1 image, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Thunder, Please Remain Seated. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Fluidity is all the rage, fashionable even, it is perhaps an argument which is necessary in this day and age as we search for a wider definition of what it means to be human, what it means to be an individual. To be flexible in your thinking does not mean you are betraying your beliefs, just open-minded to the possibility that there is more than just your philosophy which shapes the world, and which has at one time guided the past.

Thunder, Please Remain Seated. Album Review. full post

(433 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Joe Jackson, Fool. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

A perceived Fool can be the wisest person to talk, nobody ever pays too much attention to them until that nugget of reason which catches the ear is proclaimed as profound, but then dismissed as a one in a life time inspiration, never realising that the ready wit is always there, ready to be spoken, it is just that the fool prefers to only speak when he knows when everybody else is being duped by higher powers and they have become blind to the charms of conmen.

Joe Jackson, Fool. Album Review. full post

(452 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

The Bench: (Friendship Forever), Theatre Review. The Casa, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *

Cast: Barbara Cunningham, Neil Summerville.

How far will you go for friendship? If you are fortunate enough to have that one person in your life to whom you would go to the end of the Earth for just to make them smile, then yours is perhaps the most blessed of lives, a truth of existence is that we cannot go through our time here on Earth without searching for that one person to make us happy, neither are we immune to wanting to find another in which we might be able to bring happiness too. It is a Friendship Forever in which our lives are balanced upon.

The Bench: (Friendship Forever), Theatre Review. The Casa, Liverpool. full post

(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)