X+Y, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Jo Yang, Martin McCann, Jake Davies, Alex Lawther, Alexa Davies, Orion Lee, Edward Baker Close, Percelle Ascott.

To be able to watch a film that deals with something completely different, the soul not only sings, it positively chirps with delight.

Parity.

I am thankful that I can live in an age

where a woman can achieve so much

without it being thought of weird, against the grain or that

they somehow are inverted, aping their male counterparts,

not through their own actions but because the male brain

cannot cope without turning it into competition.

 

I am thankful, yet I have one eye on the past

where I remember feeling certainly sorry,

but more downright ashamed, that the girls were told they

couldn’t kick a ball and yet when we took them on at

The Selecter, Gig Review. East Village Arts Centre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

For three years on the spin The Selecter have made their way to Liverpool and given such dynamic performances that they are impossible to ignore, especially on a night when so much was going on with the confines of the city’s bustling streets.

The Selecter are one of the seminal bands of their genre and perhaps arguably one of the most iconic and much loved, mainly due to their front woman, Pauline Black, being such a positive role model, on all who ever meet her.

The Tuts, Gig Review. East Village Arts Centre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Nobody ever wants to go to a gig and be bored, what would be the point? You may as well stay at home, put on the television and be entertained by the mindless pulp and trash that passes for entertainment at times. For in that world of the beige and insipid lays the regular heartbeat, the dull sound of the grandfather clock, polished within an inch of its life and signaling with wooden glee your every ever closing steps your date with the inevitable, beige being your watchword.

The Three Lions, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, Antonia Kinlay, Ravi Aujula, Séan Browne, Tom Davey, Lewis Collier.

The performance on the field of play is what sells newspapers and lights up the hope in a nation. It is though the commotion, the sometimes arrogant fuss and nail chewing excitement that goes on behind the scenes that captures the imagination and provides the truth behind the success and failure, the unbelievable high and the very desperate low which makes drama so fulfilling.

Ranger, Where Evil Dwells. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Where exactly does Evil dwell, perhaps in the heart of humanity, arguably where ever it is allowed to take root, sometimes in art and yet Evil is conceivably an over-rated pre-occupation in which to delve outside of the psychology text books and yet somehow the many genres of Metal are always quite happy to hang their albums onto.

Thankfully in bands such as Ranger, the precise reality of music as art as commentary is taken for what it is, not shock value, more alluding to the fact that evil can be inherent and needs to be stamped out where ever it finds a hole to crawl out of.

As Elusive As The Northern Lights.

Were the Northern Lights ever there in the great beyond?

I didn’t see them in the same way that I never heard you say

I love you, the emotional call of the union and bond,

the words that once lovers might say.

 

I saw Niagara Falls glisten in the fading light

and took solace in the embrace of its roar as it ravaged with thunder

in the darkness, yet I never saw you look more radiant or a captivating sight

on the evening you left me in the rain and cut me out from under.

Flame Over (PS Vita), Game Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9 out of 10

Flame Over is an isometric action roguelike twin-stick fire-fighting game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. Laughing Jackal was established in 2005 having released a variety of games for the PlayStation Minis range before moving onto the PS3 with Cubixx HD followed by the entertaining Hungry Giraffe, the addictive OMG HD Zombies and their latest game Flame Over for the Vita which was initially revealed at GamesCom 2013.

Von Hertzen Brothers, New Day Rising. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Unless humanity finds a way to take the Sun apart, to destroy it on the basis that they can, there will always be a New Day Rising somewhere in the Solar System; it’s almost as inevitable as the Von Hertzen Brothers producing yet another album of tremendous quality.

The Sneaky Nixons, Baby What You Do and Thick And Thinner, Single Reviews.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Divisive is as divisive is allowed to do, like the Presidential namesake in which split the United States of America 40 years ago, Liverpool’s The Sneaky Nixons have seemed to have garnered the same ringing endorsement in how to win friends and influence people. What should matter though is the sound that they generate, and for that the two latest singles from the Nixons’ stable are as keenly, and beautifully discordant, as the push will be allowed to be taken.