Last Horizon, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The distance between our lives has got to the point where to feel disconnected from society is perhaps a prospect that many arguably feel. Nearly seven billion people on a planet and yet life can feel as lonely in a crowded, bustling and sophisticated city as it can standing at the very top of the world in which the only company is a polar bear with an appetite so large that it mentally makes a menu of your body parts.  What keeps us together in one form or another is music, it may divide opinion, one genre’s greatness in one set of senses is another’s form of torture, but it certainly unites those who see the devastating beauty in it.

Last Horizon, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool. full post

(497 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Fear The Resistance, Gig Review. o2 Academy, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Fear is the mother of Hope, without one you cannot have the other, without them both the world makes as much sense as dumping a lorry load of nettle leafs into molten gold and selling the remains to the people of Sark in exchange for the island’s entire bicycle collection. Some things just don’t make sense.

Fear The Resistance, Gig Review. o2 Academy, Liverpool. full post

(565 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

Elijah James, Nobody Important. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There are moments that stick in the mind more clearly than others, the instant when you witness something so extraordinary, when you hear something so surprisingly exceptional that not only do the hairs on the back stand up on the back of the neck, they wave remarkably in the strong gust of future expectation and are strong enough to withstand the wear and tear of a flag being run up and down them for a dozen years.

Elijah James, Nobody Important. Album Review. full post

(426 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Doctor Who, Listen. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Remi Gooding, Robert Goodman, Kiran Shah.

Listen, the biggest secret of them all, the one that is always hidden in plain sight but never quite shows itself; does the Doctor know fear?

It is a question that seems to be skirted round, passed over or answered in such a way that it makes the very action in which The Doctor resolves the problem is one of false bravado. It makes the loyal viewer, the unremitting fan, feel better about themselves because no matter what The Doctor has the answers.

Doctor Who, Listen. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(472 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Niamh Jones.

With a debut E.P. due out, a gig at Leaf to look forward to and college work to do, perhaps the last thing that stunning singer and guitar player needed to was to sit down and talk about music at F.A.C.T. However, it is the measure of the woman who sits down in front of me, with a certain style that seems beyond her young years, sips on a cranberry juice and is readily forthcoming about her passion for music.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Niamh Jones. full post

(2083 words, estimated 8:20 mins reading time)

Niamh Jones, E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If the word division has been on people’s lips of late, it could be seen as understandable. Everywhere you care to look, no matter what side you feel you are either urged to take or come too of your own research and accord, division is everywhere. It is in every fabric of society and seems so deeply engrained that even if a nation or family votes in a majority in favour of something, the arguments it has caused are going to live long in the memory.

Niamh Jones, E.P. Review. full post

(493 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

The First Flourish Of Middle Age.

 

Middle Age I have found to be a painful reminder

of melancholy memory. I tell myself that I am not old,

nor scared of what is to come, the hurt of loss, the fragility of kindness,

that I have these greying bags under my blue eyes not because I am tired,

exhausted with continuous running and pulls on my time,

nor wish for a deep dreamless sleep every night

in which nightmares are also kept at bay without the aid

of a chain of garlic slices hung around my fattening neck,

The First Flourish Of Middle Age. full post

(478 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision Interview Special With The Cast And Creative Team Behind My Afternoon With Bruce Lee.

Bullying, by its very nature is a hideous and repugnant. Whether it is in the form of government control, the online world of social media, in the work place, in the home with either gender being the downtrodden and abused or from people you once considered friends, bullying is perhaps the most negative, most destructive practice one person can place upon another’s life.

Liverpool Sound And Vision Interview Special With The Cast And Creative Team Behind My Afternoon With Bruce Lee. full post

(2228 words, estimated 8:55 mins reading time)

Mind The Gap, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2014)

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Rachel Worsley, Rik Grayson, Errol Smith, Harki Bhambra.

There is a tightening feel in the back of the throat. The stomach, once calm in the open air of the London streets has started to behave like a badly serviced washing machine and the dank, dirty, dusty air is causing the lungs and pores to feel as though scrubbing for a month will not get the skin clean as it clings and scrapes away at any vestige left of reason like an urban fox clawing at the remains of a deep fried chicken and chips strewn on the pavements after one last beer was had.

Mind The Gap, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. (2014) full post

(451 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

When Boats Don’t Float.

NT. SHOP. MORNING. BRIGHT .

Nate (mid twenties) reads a newspaper as he walks out of the newsagents. The shelves are bare other than newspapers and cigarettes. A woman (mid fifties) bumps into him.

WOMAN

Prick.

NATE

Hang on you bumped into me.

WOMAN

Just watch it.

NATE

Oh get lost.

She backs away into the shop. Nate continues to read his newspaper.

HEADLINE IN NEWSPAPER

‘CARBON ASTRONAUT BLOWS OUT BRAINS LIVE ON AIR’

When Boats Don’t Float. full post

(5369 words, estimated 21:29 mins reading time)