Joe Satriani, What Happens Next. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There may be no words needed, no sentence passed or phrase expressed in admonishment at the way the world is heading into an abyss of its own making and yet sometimes, a musical intellect will say it best when they allow the instrument of their choice, their weapon of anger in which to wield against the pseudo whizz kids and politically emotional unstable who see the world as a plaything and whose own words are destructive and callous, even when reduced to the insensibility of a hundred tweets.

Joe Satriani, What Happens Next. Album Review. full post

(457 words, 1 image, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Rhiannon Scutt, #9 E.P. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Rhiannon Scutt may be known as one half of the fabulous Folk couple Rita Payne but she also deserves the accolade of holding her own name in assurance with a sense of clarity to which some might find their own identity consumed by all that has gone before. Identity is important, it is the madness of our own lives that makes what we absorb so tangible, a conviction that no matter how small the chapter at that point in time is, what can emerge is one built on conviction.

Rhiannon Scutt, #9 E.P. E.P. Review. full post

(416 words, 1 image, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Gavin Sutherland, Wireless Connection. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Once the maker of A Curious Noise, now the man to whom holds the keys to the Wireless Connection; Gavin Sutherland’s sense of musical purity knows no earthly bounds. The static that others may find on their dial as they speed through the signals and the indicators of life, the crackle and the hiss as their motion is deemed to be clumsy, heavy handed and liable to pull the control off in frustration, is simply treated with elegance and grace by the man who sees Roots and Americana as a relationship worth preserving and who sees no issue with offering it to the listening public as a link in which to enjoy together.

Gavin Sutherland, Wireless Connection. Album Review. full post

(385 words, 1 image, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

A Million Machines. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is two ways to look at the way we have come to rely on machines in our daily lives, one that it has lead down a road of frightening, arts led dystopia, a nightmare vision in which every aspect of our lives has become subservient to the ghost in the shell, or we can look upon it as the only crowning glory we have truly been able to convince ourselves that was worth all the effort; Utopian hooks and creativity beyond the original human thought or a nightmare we can never awake from properly.

A Million Machines. Album Review. full post

(406 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Paul Heaton And Jacqui Abbott, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

It could be Rotterdam, Rome or anywhere but as December’s cruel thoughts turn to the end of the year, as the office parties began to stack up and the songs from karaoke machines began to rotate on mass, there is in amongst the freeze to come the knowledge that it is Liverpool that Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott once again find themselves in and producing a night of music in which to dance and reflect the night away.

Paul Heaton And Jacqui Abbott, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool. full post

(523 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Howards End (2017). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Hayley Atwell, Matthew Macfadyen, Joe Bannister, Bessie Carter, Philippa Coulthard, Alex Lawther, Donna Banya, Tracey Ullman, Joseph Quinn, Rosalind Eleazer, Yolanda Kettle, Sandra Voe, Miles Jupp, Jonah Hauer-King, Julia Ormond.

For all television’s preoccupation with fiction that tries to capture the times in which our great grandparents would have lived through, from the dichotomy of the wonders of invention and adventure in the Victorian era and its more fragile, disgusting more sneering side in which the poor were treated with absolute revulsion and through to the period in which an entire generation were almost wiped out in the horror of the First World War; television in the last few years has done its best to glorify in this time and tried to draw parallels with our own sense of time on the planet.

Howards End (2017). Television Review. full post

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

Another (Modest) Proposal.

How Swift

We forget

that there was a time

that satire was preserved

for the throats of the pompous,

the lofty with copper bust

on show

in Halls or outside churches,

seeming pious in their pose

and their place in history texts assured,

satire was preserved for them,

satire, let’s eat the rich,

for in their taste for blood,

the Chingford Iain, teeth bared

pumping fist

now uses the poor for fuel,

the disabled to further his cause

of a bright beautiful future,

Another (Modest) Proposal. full post

(124 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

For The Love Of A Sister (Not Born Of Blood).

Sisters, who’d have them,

I didn’t when I was a young boy,

the thought of being

in the same room as the overuse

of teenage perfume

met with warm air

and ever changing pop star

and film matinee idol crush,

of perceived tattle tale

and can do no wrong with simpering smile

and behind the scenes dirty tricks

and mind games,

filled me with dread.

Now I would love a sister,

but the closest I have is not blood,

but she is the finest woman

For The Love Of A Sister (Not Born Of Blood). full post

(113 words, estimated 27 secs reading time)

The Scouse Nativity, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Paul Duckworth, Michael Fletcher, Stephen Fletcher, Hayley Hampson, Lindzi Germain, Andrew Schofield, Keddy Sutton.

Band: Ben Gladwin, Greg Joy, Emily Linden.

Choir: Jay McWinen, Elaine Collins, Dee Spencer, Teresa Loughlie, Joan Pinnington, Rob Liston, Linda Martin, Barbara Davenport, Gretta Southern, Julia Hayes, Paul Davenport, Melanie Robson, Molly Madigan.

The Scouse Nativity, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(560 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Shed Seven, Instant Pleasures. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It has been a long, often lonely, wait for any sign of a new Shed Seven album to come out. Break ups and the seemingly self decline of the period in which they were born into, placed together with others in the elaborate styling’s of Brit-Pop, an anger and a rage that perhaps didn’t truly reflect their persona or the way they played. Some moments in life though are full to the brim of the immediate and the gratifying; some have the Instant Pleasures woven through them like writing in a never ending stick of rock.

Shed Seven, Instant Pleasures. Album Review. full post

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