Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Hype can be a tool in which certain yardsticks are set out to inevitably fail. Hype may gather interest, it may circulate a powerful emotion but the problem with hype is that it soon rusts; it fades into corporate fantasy and the sloth like figure of doomed expectancy. Hype is on the same level as hysteria, it rages and roars but then whimpers like a mouse caught choosing between three different slabs of meagre cheese.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a cheeky, admirable quality to Tiz Mcnamara that crowds just cannot but help enjoy as he performs on stage in front of them. Having suggested with a glint in his eye and with the voice of pleasurable mischief coming through Leaf’s microphone, that he had swam all the way from Dublin to open for Rosenblume’s E.P. launch, there was no chance that he was going to leave Leaf’s packed audience without a smile on their face and a song in their already packed hearts.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: EJ Raymond, Ricci McLeod, Irene Macdougall, Alison Halstead, Millie Turner, Miles Mitchell, Gerard McDermott, Ann Louis Ross. Amy Conachan.
There’s nothing like a wedding to enhance a good blood feud, to really get to the bottom of the relationship between one family and another, united in only one thing, absolute hatred of each other.
Lorca’s Blood Wedding explores the relationship of such feud but with that subtle twist that makes it stand out, makes it drive home the serrated cake knife home even further, as the least likely person on the day is the one calling the shots.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.