You couldn’t know
just how relieved I was
when I found out you were not going to be there,
a weight off my mind,
too say the least,
for your bulky shadow
is forever stalking me,
and yet
your physical self
is insubstantial
and ghost like.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There are places on the planet in which Time and tradition suggests with a firm but pleasing hand that you should be on any given date. Marillion had already perhaps and with wonderful particular mischief, performed in the United States of America during the run up to the 2016 American Presidential election and their new album F.E.A.R. being an almost perfect backdrop to the constant drip feeding of reports and special analysis of what was happening across the water, across the great divide.
The sinister sound of the deafeningly quiet
fills the frightened, leaden black skies
and as the border draws closer,
the rat bags cowl and skulk
in their misbegotten dens and Waterloo Station
is a million miles away,
London is a million steps distant and the channel,
the long sleeve that separates us from absolved culture is dry,
spent and full of wondrous starving starfish
hell bent on retribution;
we cross the border
in our rag tag finery, our mockingbird feathers and brutal denim,
half peeled, half stitched jackets…
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
The myth of it all, the subtle web weaved that creates illusion and the wonder of the creative, all is alive and well inside the superb minds of The Loch Ness Mouse, a band of stirring quality wrapped up inside the cool and the believed; it is to their self titled album that the myths are made real and the illusion filled in with facts and truths, one of which just how good they are when the music starts to play and where they can take you in their imagination.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a difference, perhaps not so obvious at first glance or thought, between the daylight and the Night Hours, it is one in which many who dwell in the light, who cannot see the darkness as anything but a hindrance to enjoyment and the feeling of warmth on the skin, don’t see and that is only because they don’t witness the shadows on the souls, the pain that the night can bring and the sheer excellence of the art that dwells within. It is that kind of difference that Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith bring very much to the fore in their Folk driven album Night Hours.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber, Armie Hammer, Karl Glusman, Robert Aramayo, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen, India Menuez.
A kiss in the dark,
hands held tight, the distant
pleasure of love
often alluding us, like water
in a barren land, but one
that still grows cacti
without hesitation;
a thousand stubbly pricks
in search of water
and the tendrils
that slip underneath the soil.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The modern age has taught us many things that our ancestors would have balked at, it may be just the way things work out, that our very nature is pre-disposed to argue with a voice that is full of nonsense, that we have forgotten the art and point of debate with civility in our hearts, that when we suffer defeat at the hands of those with greater persuasive qualities or indeed that their philosophy is of greater sound text, we belittle ourselves by believing all is lost and not Lost Is Not Losing.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It is only by accident that some of the greatest discoveries are made, that inner voice in your gut which suggests with high spirits, “Try me, you’ll like me, you will love me”; it happens so much but we often disregard the advice our senses tell us, implores upon us and yet if we did but listen the once, like the random happy accident that awaits, our hearts would undoubtedly be more fulfilled. It is a happy accident to come across art in the same way, the moment when you hear a snatch of a song and find yourself buying an album and not being disappointed at all.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
On fire, blazing with so much anger and hope that the only thing that might compare to a match held up close to the eye is seeing the Sun being so much in focus that the Earth may as well be hurtling towards its intense solitary star; Matchstickmen, the snare and crackle of Lucifer’s tip with added muscle of songs that radiate and roar like the finest stoked fire in a Scottish Highland’s castle on New Year’s Eve, it is the fact that Matchstickmen have produced such a fine and wonderful album that From Our Own Ashes somehow is going to be comfortably one of the great hard rock albums of the year.