Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Swansea has perhaps never felt so vibrant as it has in the last decade, the emergence, the phoenix like quality that makes the city stand in lofty affection by those who have visited it, the resilience of its people and the towering memory of a poet whose words stalk the South Wales valleys and waters all combine to make the second city of the country feel first class and cool.
I lock myself in
my solitary medicated confinement,
grieving Jekyll, erudite and calm Hyde,
and allow the room to close
around me, swirling like thunder
clouds, blackened and angry
but with the tinge of optimism
that the confinement will not last,
it will not allow the meekness of surrender
to bitter my experience,
for after all, the prison, the bonded jail,
is my own to suffer and nobody else
paid with their lives to see me sweat
out the pain of individual isolation.
Hollow incarceration,
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The maverick is alive and well and absolutely kicking out with the force of the brave and the idealistic. Tensheds is all things it seems to all who come across the beautifully entrancing anarchy that is on offer, the pushing not just of boundaries but of the imposed limitations we seem grateful to accept as some type of natural law, a set of rules that we must not do something because nobody else does it either.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Conrad Nelson, Russell Richardson, Andy Cryer, Jack Lord, Hannah Barrie, Vanessa Schofield, Lauryn Redding, Andrew Whitehead, Jordan Kemp, Adam Barlow, Ruth Alexander Rubin, Mike Hugo, Jessica Dyas.
You can always trust Time to deliver a verdict that reconciles the world when it is damaged just as you can trust Time to play with the misfortunes of men when it suits to teach them a lesson for the insanity and jealous ravings.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * *
Cast: Testament, DJ Woody
Blake Remixed is beatboxer and rapper Testament’s first theatre show and looks at how relevant the poetry and art of William Blake still is today. An early influence in Testaments life, this show explores the relevance that Blake’s work and themes can still have on our culture. He compares today’s society to the time of Blake’s and asks if social justice, religious and racial tolerance is any different. Testament takes on Blake’s poetry and puts his own unique stamp on 18th century themes.
What is there to do but whisper your name,
for to say it loud is like asking the Devil
to sit down with me and sup on tea and dine
on roasted flesh
of fatted calf and potatoes,
empty but for their skins
blighted by your ignorance.
I find I care not where you are
and yet out of the corner of my eye
I see your leftover remains
and I know you will be forever close by
despite my best efforts to ignore you now,
Steve Harley at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, November 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are moments in life where the delicate, sometimes unseen hairs on the back of the hand and those that reside in the nape of the neck, rise with clear conscious at the sound of humanity doing what it does best, singing with unashamed passion from the same song book and with beauty in their hearts.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The Universe is a strange beast, it offers so much that is new and yet the heart always yearns for what has been, what it remembers well. A new Galaxy could form infront of Humanity’s eyes and yet we would still look upon our own glorious night-time satellite rotating in the sky with wonder and amazement.
We are all alone on life support
with only the wires of modern life
keeping us company,
the small ticks of reassurance that someone else
is out there thinking of us
as they hope
we are daydreaming about them,
the only time the wires buzz with any sign of
life is when existence is made to pulse
rapidly, when survival is paramount
and when the wires countdown to possible extinction.
I switch off my life support during the day
but at night, when the darkness is clearer
Go West and Nik Kershaw at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. November 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Whoever thought of putting together two of the big names of their generation, not only on the same bill, but as some sort of 80s super-group, for a tour deserves to be given their own office, an unlimited budget and the phone numbers of all the bands of the last great decade for singles and the 45s.