Nora Konstanse, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool.

Nora Konstanse, Paul McCartney Auditorium. L.I.P.A., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

There are times when you can sit in an auditorium, with a gathering of people, large or small, the taste of stale beer reeking from the floorboards, the feeling of a thousand echoing performances coming out of the walls to meet you with the stealth like attack of a thousand lost drum sticks floating in the air and a million dropped chords wreak havoc with the senses. That what has just taken place in front of you has the power to shift opinions and level mountains of built up former thoughts; a performance, that if captured on a Geiger counter, would have huge areas being cordoned off as the authorities braced themselves for public attitude fall out.

Nora Konstanse, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A, Liverpool. full post

(525 words, 1 image, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Mari Hajem, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool.

Mari Hajem in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.PA., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The feeling of goose pimples appearing on your body for no reason at all is not uncommon. Like all natural bodily functions, holding your breath without realising when something unexpected happens before your eyes, the small unseen nervous tick when grace goes out the window, the pleasure received with a huge unnoticed smile when the day is completed by the sense of overwhelming achievement. All are connected to the same route experience, that of understanding something magical has just taken place in your vicinity and that you are richer for the experience.

Mari Hajem, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool. full post

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

Ohlayindigo, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool.

Ohlayindigo at the L.I.P.A. 2015 Showcase. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is always a different beat in which your life to. Those that hear it are blessed by which ever deity or Humanist thought they prescribe to, those that don’t, those that stick to the tried and trusted beige without experiencing the colourful option are in some respects doomed to live in a world infested by the dull and creatively obtuse.

Ohlayindigo, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool. full post

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

Jessie Solange, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is a quiet, but still audible to those listening with trepidation and the silent thanks of steely fortitude in such matters, countdown before Jessie Solange kicks off the Wednesday showcase with a smile on her face and a quick word for the audience who made their way to the Paul McCartney Auditorium.

Jessie Solange, Gig Review. Paul McCartney Auditorium, L.I.P.A., Liverpool. full post

(430 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.CT., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Hayley Atwell, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, James Spader, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, Idris Elba, Cobie Smulders, Linda Cardellini, Andy Serkis, Stellan Skarsgård, Lou Ferrigno, Stan Lee, Claudia Kim, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Thomas Kretschmann.

The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.CT., Liverpool. full post

(596 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Memento Mori.

The parcel arrived with the postmark of Moscow stamped

across the brown,

undisturbed wrapping,

containing digital

information, music that had caught my ear as I surfed online

for something new to enthuse my world once more.

Unlike the day I first read Das Kapital, now residing on a dusty shelf

next to my Great-grandmother’s Gold leaf Guernsey Bible,

a copy of the Koran, the best of Punch and a much loved

set of drumsticks, yours by far the best as they slowly splinter

and decay as we all must.

Memento Mori. full post

(304 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

Tick, Tick…Boom!, Theatre Review, Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Stuart Crowther, Franki Burke, Adam Handford.

New York in the early 1990s felt at times as if the whole cultural edifice was on its way to being torn down, that imagination, artistic individualism and intellectual prosperity was being neglected, shamed, destroyed by the ever rampant chase of undying consumerism. That the beautiful, even if crime infested streets surrounding certain areas that were awash with artists of every creed were being driven out and in their place those that chased every dollar, every dime and cent with religious capitalist zeal were taking over. Reaganomics had won and the starving artist had better join the party.

Tick, Tick…Boom!, Theatre Review, Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(489 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Your Folly.

There is a hint of madness in your eyes,

sallow, stinking of grievances mislaid;

a Kurt Cobain look but with none of the richness

or depth of consequence, a folly driven by a fool’s errand,

the unravelled strand of deserted rope decaying on the hot,

blistering jetty, no sign of a ship to save this sinking soul.

This madness, the musical abuse in which you crave

has lost its meaning

in your ears and all you hear now is the sound

of a ticking bomb, the explosion driven between the tick and the tock

Your Folly. full post

(258 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

Peasant’s King, Gig Review. Studio 2, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are bands that you watch live and you just instinctively know they need, musically demand, to be on a bigger stage to get the full blown effect that their music requires. It is a sign of good things to come that if the sound can grab you by whatever means necessary, whether by brain, the soul or any other bodily function that drives the musical desire, then it requires to be heard in a setting that really gets deep down and dirty with appreciation, such is surely the fate that awaits Pontipridd’s Peasant’s King.

Peasant’s King, Gig Review. Studio 2, Liverpool. full post

(393 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Dalaro, Gig Review. Studio 2, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

There has always been a mutual respect and understanding between the two great areas of the North that straddle famous rivers and who look out far beyond the shores of the counties they reside in. Liverpool and Gateshead, and the Scottish equivalent in Glasgow, have much in common, much to celebrate, not just in politics, in its sporting prowess and its resilient people, but in the way they both have been left to rot by successive governments since the turn of the 20^th Century but who are both shining examples of sticking two fingers up to the Westminster Empire and being their own unique city.

Dalaro, Gig Review. Studio 2, Liverpool. full post

(371 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)