Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Belief is everything; it is the cornerstone of personal freedom and being able to achieve all that you set out to do. Without belief, there is no confidence and for Rebecca Downes, confidence and belief appear to go hand in hand, especially as the woman from Wolverhampton releases the hugely impressive follow up to her debut album Back To The Start, the scintillating Believe.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Light always prevails, even in the darkest moment, the salvation of redeeming light is one in which a path is offered, a trail blazed. The light should always be seen as a way out of the darkness and each time it takes a soul from its torment it adds yet another chapter to its story, the Chronicles of Light is one held in the hand with passion.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, Sean Rigby, Anton Lesser, Dakota Blue Richards, Jack Bannon, James Bradshaw, David Burnett, Rob Callender, Hermione Corfield, Sam Coulson, Darell D’Silva, John Draycott, Peter Forbes, Ben Lambert, Stefanie Martini, Amy McCallum, Milo Twomey, Eleanor Williams, Hugh Simon.
When a young woman goes missing off the streets of Oxford, the case almost becomes too much for Detective Inspector Thursday who sees the parallels in an investigation from four years earlier far too disturbing and too close to home to almost bear.
The small stone,
misshapen by history
and the waves that lap at the Gods
smoking tobacco
as they hold back the Nile,
sits perfectly still
on the edge of my wooden desk
now
only serves to remind me that the world
is forever calling out to be explored
and whilst I have forever stained
its appearance in indelible ink
with the date of its discovery
and the place on the Nile
in which countless eyes
ignored its white dimpled shell,
Paul Carrack at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is a simple equation in the end, a matter of fact that should always be repeated wherever and whenever the mood strikes and the thoughts in the head turn to a more beautiful life than one recklessly being left to rot in the chains of musical absurdity. Paul Carrack does not come to Liverpool enough, especially for the army of fans he has made over a long and impressive career that packed out the Philharmonic Hall on sleet filled sky night in January.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In Robert Vincent, Liverpool has a giant of such lyrical repose, of such melancholic absolution, that he towers in virtue each time he steps out on to a stage, physically and musically. In his support to Paul Carrack, a man who also understands undeniably the truth that a song can bring to a person’s heart, Robert Vincent took the crowd on a journey, a sad one perhaps he may have joked, but one in which the legitimacy of melancholic praise and beauty was unconditional and pure.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
Cast: Leonardo diCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge, Duane Howard, Melaw Nakehk’o, Fabrice Adde, Arthur Redcloud, Christopher Rosamond, Robert Moloney, Lukas Haas, Brendan Fletcher, Tyson Wood, McCaleb Burnett, Emmanuel Bilodeau, Grace Dove, Chesley Wilson.
There are extraordinary feats of human endeavour that you just have to marvel at, lessons from people in the past to how they conducted themselves under severe pressure and extremes and how perhaps as young infants of the 21st Century we have lost that natural affinity to stretch ourselves against such adversity.
The dragon in my skull
is breathing too hard
and making my eyesight
blur, seem distant and the claw
from the left foot is tapping out
Jazz moves in time to Beiderbecke
as the heat from its nostril
clouds over my right eye,
steam punk future,
one electronic eye patch
covered in soot and dragon grime, as Buddy Rich
smashes out hits
against my temple
the headache in perfect drum beast time.
The right eye,
never the same since the day
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You might always have a sneaking suspicion that one of Britain’s much loved and endearing song writers will always pull something special out of the bag when it comes to releasing an album of new songs,. Something that touches the listener in ways that remind them of the first time they saw a rainbow in the sky after a week’s worth of rain, a moment in time when the first sip of champagne at a wedding caught their taste buds and revelled in the simple but undeniable pleasure of a rite of passage; that effortless elegance, the uncomplicated grace that resides in the heart of Paul Carrack and his latest album, Soul Shadows, is one of purity and conviction.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Andre Ward, Tony Bellew, Ritchie Coster, Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran, Graham McTavish, Malik Bazille, Ricardo McGill, Gabe Rosado, Wood Harris, Buddy Osborn, Rupal Pujara.
Hollywood and sport doesn’t exactly mix, football, golf, rugby, ice hockey, all end up being seen as a pale imitation of what can happen on the field of play and the reason it mostly comes down to is the ability to replicate the dramatic vision of the spectacle is almost non-existent. The film revels too much in the prowess of the team event to be carried off in spectacular fashion, it looks clumsy and forced, the poetry of the game stunted and fluffed out, it is overdone and over produced.