I felt the Earthquake
from underneath my feet, several
miles deep, hundreds of miles
wide in length and breadth,
I felt the Earthquake, the seismic shock
of a world reduced to falling down,
falling, brick by brick
and the laughter of madmen
in glass houses making sure
their sticking tape, black sided gaffer
tape, held their homes together.
The appearance of Herod in my desert,
the decree of now move on, leave
my world for you all are now unworthy
to live in my palace of tin, emanates
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Vincent Skyner, Emily Hargreaves, Natalie Bedkowska, Sarah Williams, Alishia Killian, Amy Robinson, Henrietta Martins, Ayesha Tarbuck, Christopher Braden, Micahael Emmerson, Alice Williams, Carly O’ Hare, Sammi Jo Christie, Jerome Griffin.
At times there just doesn’t feel like enough gore in the world, especially in theatre, something meaty to get the teeth into, something with anger and bite, and if it must be done then it deserves credit. Titus Andronicus is still after 400 years the one play that feeds off all the negativity and feelings of revenge that can be ravaged in humanity; take one life and you are a murderer, take them all and you become a god, as Stalin once wrote, it is just a matter of statistics.
Where do I place the cross,
the age old question of democracy
to which a flipped coin,
smooth and pointless upon either
side, will invariably come down
after spinning in the air
like a cold mechanical Catherine
Wheel, defiance in the face of all the odds
down on its side, the universe
goading you
into believing there is a third way.
Place the x, remember the feeling
when you believed in heart and soul
that it meant to change
your life
but then the feeling withered
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Musical cartographers, those who love to pinpoint every detail of music ever recorded on to the map of the world, are always in for a treat when a new regime comes along to add emphasis to the coves, inlets and straggling shorelines; after all something new and so far undiscovered makes Maps, any map more complete.
King Harvest & The Weight, otherwise known as Ben Addy, Justin Edley and Olly Smith offer their debut album Maps as a cartographers dream, a musical offering to enrich the senses whilst at all times knowing that as with any debut, it should be taken that the lay of the land ahead is not charted territory but filled with desire to explore and chart for others who may pass by.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
The Getaway, perhaps instead the hurried departure or even the escape from the expected, for that is the plain feeling that comes across with somewhat muted apology in the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album in five years.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Matthew McNulty, Hugo Speer, Rupert Everett, Andre Flynn, Farren Morgan, Simon Startin, Jonny Magnanti, Thalissa Teixeira, Richard Dormer, Lisa McGrillis. Matt Stokoe, Tom Morley, Daniel Brown.
You came home to die
and it was a decision that I
applauded, that I understood
and I told you so and you smiled
whilst deep into the coma,
the final rage of sleep,
the dawn yet unseen,
you smiled and a hundred miles away
the Earth stood motionless.
A quick release, less than a year
but oh my friend, the days since then
have stuttered on, have been less kind
because my picture of you
has been eroded by time, my faltering
Broken Witt Rebels at the 02, London. Photograph by Peter Noble.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is not often that Birmingham gets to wake up London, gets the chance to holler into the soft tissue of the capital’s head, especially first thing on a Sunday morning when the world has barely recovered from the day before, a Saturday in which the o2 Arena shook its foundations and sent shock waves across to the Isle of Dogs and hopefully terrified the Westminster village to its core.
To live and die by numbers,
to be at the mercy of numerical opinion
and the percentage point,
to infer that all is lost upon the raising brow
of the integer and downcast digit,
is surely only adding up
to the fact that we have lost control
of humanity, our human intelligence eroded
by quantity rather than time;
to live and die by the second, to pack things in
to the day rather than be ruled by one to ten,
to live in the moment for as long as possible, stretching it out
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When all that remains is love, the human heart will feel peace. It is a love that has been kept firmly in the hearts of the tens of thousands of Marillion fans since the first moment they came across the band. When all that remains is love, then the complexity of human emotion can come shining through like the Lighthouse of Alexandria, it is talked of for all time and the beacon searches out both wrecks and salvation alike.