Claire Sanders of Twisted Trees. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There will always be a place for your favourite music, the heart, nor brain ever lets go of any of the lyrics that you spent most of your life memorising to the point that if pushed you could recite them word for word under exam conditions whilst sinking in quick sand and rescue only possible if you even get the obscure releases pitch perfect.
Inge Bremnes at Studio 2 in Liverpool. June 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 7/10
There is a well beaten path that has emerged once more between the fiords of Norway and the port of Liverpool. It has come back to life in recent years as the city opens its arms with anticipation at the thought of more good music finding its way to the venues of the undoubted capital of music culture in the U.K.
Isobel Lim from The Indecisives. Studio 2, Parr Street. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 7/10
To sit in a venue and watch any number of bands or seasoned solo musicians ply their trade, thrill a crowd and look pristine throughout is something that any of us can take for granted. Sometimes though we forget where the musicians start out from, the nerves of debut or even 50th gig still thundering round their instruments and still fresh as the hour after a storm abates.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Some album names just give off the aura of invincibility, of the passion of the place or city they are emulating or trying to evoke. American cities pretty much have the upper hand in this compared much of Europe in terms of 20th and 21st Century Western culture. Scarborough in England certainly captures a state of mind with a certain generation and various places in London can tickle the imagination but American cities jump down the throat of the listener and New York City perhaps arguably jumps further and lands harder than any other city on Earth.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
You don’t need to look any further for a magnificent read when it comes to a series of graphic novels than Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key.
It is a series built upon the very fundamentals of great story telling that art can only ever enhance. The premise of a unique story, the realisation that you care about the way each character is drawn from the writer’s imagination and lovingly captured by the artist, the pace of the narrative, whether it is fast or slow doesn’t matter and the action and thoughts drawing you ever deeper into their own world, blurring the lines between narrative symbolism and the representation of Humanity’s great assets, that of the overwhelming power of vision, inspiration and creativity.
First published by Ace Magazine on-line. May 2014.
It was all about England having qualified for the World Cup for the first time since I had started following football with passion in 1976 that led me to watching nearly every match in the 1982 tournament with a grin and in equal measure, painful despair, etched all over my face.
I remember fragments of the World Cup in Argentina, however by and large the 1978 World Cup was something that by-passed me in much the same way as every other lad in my year at school developing a love of cars and engines, I knew it existed, but I had other past-times to pre-occupy me.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Barry Ward, Simone Kirby, Andrew Scott, Jim Norton, Brian F. O’Byrne, Paul Fox, Sorcha Fox, Aisling Franciosi, Karl Geary, Denise Gough, Aileen Henry, Seamus Hughes, Francis Magee, Conor McDermottroe.
For as long as Ken Loach is alive and well, there really should be no reason for him to ever give up film making. As his latest piece, Jimmy’s Hall, shows that where there is a story involving social commentary, of wrongs visited upon a particular person, there should be a person to be able to tell it and they don’t come any better than Ken Loach.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way, Terrance Maynard, Kick Gurry, Franz Drameh, Charlotte Riley, Dragomir Mrsic, Masayoshi Haneda, Lara Pulver, Madeleine Mantock,
Assly Zandry, Sebastian Blunt, Beth Goddard, Ronan Summers, Aaron Romano, Usman Akram, Bentley McKinley, Andrew Neil, Martin Hyder, Tommy Campbell, John Dutton, Harry Landis, Rachel Handshaw, Martin McDougal, Jane Hill, Anna Botting.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Iain Glen, Killian Scott, Nora-Jane Noone, John Kavanagh, Paraic Breathnach, Susanne Schrader, Midie Corcoran, Lovis Baum, Dion Arensmann, Ronan Leahy, Eithne Ní Enrí, Nina Borey, Pippa Borey, Nuala Donnolly, Barry Keoghan, Chris Connors, Gary Hetzaler, Martin Linnane, Fionn O’Shea, Ingrid Craigie, Gavin Drea, Síghle Ní Chonail, Andreas Krämer, Ray Quinn.
Television and stage actor Andrew Lancel, who is set to play Brian Epstein in Epstein: The Man Who Made the Beatles, in London’s West End this summer, has been confirmed as one of the celebrity names who will unveil a commemorative Heritage Foundation Blue Plaque at the London offices of Epstein’s company NEMS on Sunday 29th June.
Andrew Lancel (Coronation Street and The Bill) says he is honoured to be asked to be a part of the special unveiling ceremony which will take place at Sutherland House, adjacent to the London Palladium, where NEMS occupied offices in the building from the height of Beatlemania in 1964 until shortly after Brian’s tragic death in 1967.