Marissa Nadler, July. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Behind the oblique, somewhere in hiding in the shadows and the painted references to the black and white world of Folk music stands Marissa Nadler.

Ms. Nadler’s sixth studio album follows the same unique path that she has ploughed all her career. Intelligent and heartfelt lyrics with a point wrapped up in the enigma of the feeling of enforced solitude, the loneliness that the brave and inspired crave but coming out just enough to spread a tale or two of spell binding quality before shutting the door completely.

Marissa Nadler, July. Album Review. full post

(350 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

The Avengers, The Lost Episodes. Brought To Book. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Colin Baker, Adrian Lukis, Tim Bentinck, Alan Cox, Blake Ritson, George Rainsford, Camilla Power, Sophie Aldred, Philip Mulryne, Kieran Bew, Richard Franklin.

With the murder of his fiancé Peggy still haunting him, Doctor David Keel finds himself further embroiled in the plans of the mysterious John Steed and his attempt to bring down the latest in organised crime in London in the second story re-made by Big Finish’s The Avengers: The Lost Episodes.

The Avengers, The Lost Episodes. Brought To Book. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(446 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

The Jacobins, E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

There is a confident, almost poised rawness to The Jackobins sound that is positively endearing. The four songs on offer by the band demonstrate perfectly that the biggest hurdle for any group or artist starting out is having the sheer guts to find their way out way out the bedroom and into a studio or onto the stage. Far too many dream about doing things, they constant urge to say yes I would be so good at that but letting the spark of ambition rot away in the corner, unloved, unkempt; only thought of ten years later with a sigh and bitter recriminations.

The Jacobins, E.P. Review. full post

(386 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Babylon, Television Review. Channel 4.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Brit Marling, James Nesbitt, James Robinson, Paterson Joseph, Adam Deacon, Jill Halfpenny, Mark Womack, Nicola Walker, Daniel Kaluuya, Nick Blood, Andrew Brooke, Deborah Rosan, Lee Nicholas Harris, Bertie Carvel, Lee Asquith-Coe, Navin Chowdhry, Ella Smith, Jaspal Badwell, Vic Waghorn, Paul Blackwell, Stuart Matthews, Stuart Martin, Jonny Sweet, Elena Hargreaves.

Despite Babylon opening with the type of shot that Channel Four were famous for when they first started out as a broadcaster, the kind of camera angle that would make the late Mary Whitehouse splutter and cough as if somebody had suggested she should drown her sorrows in a five day bender in Majorca, the pastiche of modern policing by Danny Boyle, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain was at least a look through a polarised lens at the way the public see today’s Police Force.

Babylon, Television Review. Channel 4. full post

(511 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

The Musketeers, The Good Soldier. Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Santiago Cabrera, Luke Pasqualino, Tom Burke, Howard Charles, Peter Capaldi, J.J. Field, Tamla Kari, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Hugo Speer, Anna Skellern, Adrian Schiller, Simon Paisley Day, Phoebe Fox, Peter- Hugo Daly, Jim High.

Sunday nights have not been the same since The Musketeers came swashbuckling into the living rooms of audiences up and down the country. The French tale of swords, honour and friendship has perhaps never been more popular and rightly so.

The Musketeers, The Good Soldier. Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(513 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Hot Snow. The Avengers: The Lost Episodes. Volume One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Camilla Power, Colin Baker, Tim Bentnick, Adrian Lukis, Phil Mulryne, Blake Ritson, Anjella Mackintosh, Kieran Bew, John Banks, Richard Franklin.

Arguably The Avengers was one of I.T.V.’s flagship programmes that for its time possibly rivalled B.B.C.’s Doctor Who for its intrigue and audience adulation. Like the B.B.C. though, the television programme‘s early broadcasts were not as keenly looked after as they should have been.

Hot Snow. The Avengers: The Lost Episodes. Volume One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(607 words, estimated 2:26 mins reading time)

The Chairs, Theatre Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Leanne Jones, Paula Stewart, Donna Ray Coleman, Christine Heaney, Laura Hall, Lucy Graham, Dan Pendleton, Jack Spencer, Lee Burnitt, Shaun Roberts, Bradley Thompson, Alex Clark, Tom Nevitt.

 

Tell Tale Theatre have already carved out a growing reputation as a production company that doesn’t adhere to the norm, the cosy or thankfully the easy to do. Their production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a glowing testament to that fact, and where angels fear to tread, where other’s might find the ever growing trickle of sweat just too much to bear, Tell Tale Theatre wrack up the pressure on themselves another notch and produce an amazing piece of choreographed art, full of absurdity, lots of insanity and above all tale of what can happen to us all if left alone in the dark too long.

The Chairs, Theatre Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room, Liverpool. full post

(458 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Pauline Black Of The Selecter.

Every generation gets the music they deserve. As with politicians, it can be a blessing or a curse visited upon those growing up between the time of leaving junior school and the post teenage years and finding music either a godsend or hindrance to their lives. For those who just avoided the golden period of Progressive Rock and were not bothered with the happy go lucky feel of a three minute song that really didn’t have a message there was always Punk and Ska and one of the leading lights of the latter has to be the gracious lead vocalist of Ska favourites The Selecter, Pauline Black.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Pauline Black Of The Selecter. full post

(1309 words, estimated 5:14 mins reading time)

Buddy Holly And The Cricketers, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When the world of music lost Buddy Holly in a plane crash that took three of the brightest stars in American culture, he was only 22. Given good health he probably would have still been with us today and no doubt enjoying a little stage time or at least sitting in a corner and being a true inspiration and mentor to a whole generation of musicians to whom the 1950s is as alien and remote as playing outside all day and not coming home till it gets dark.

Buddy Holly And The Cricketers, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre. full post

(401 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

In Search of Voices. (In Honour Of Dylan Thomas).

To begin at the Beginning…

The voices in my head always sounded like Richard Burton delivering his polished lines as the Narrator in Under Milkwood. I say voices, it was just the sound of the hero in me, that underused, undernourished soul that waved from the shore at the edge of the ocean as I slinked terrified at the prospect of being at school, college…University, through all my important days, mediocre times, desperate hours, dark relentless minutes that stretched and spiralled seemingly out of control, through my first kiss, then my first real kiss…and no doubt would be there trying to talk calmly to me on my final day on Earth as I waved franticly  to the hero on the otherwise deserted shore to save me whilst I started to finally, and regretfully drown.

In Search of Voices. (In Honour Of Dylan Thomas). full post

(2652 words, estimated 10:36 mins reading time)