Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

The way the world is squeezing the creativity out of people as a whole, it’s always heartening to when you come across an album that may have taken a while to record, possibly because of many different factors but sounds as though each delicate step was thought out, processed with great care and attention. In the end, it is a testament to their inventiveness and never say die attitude.

For Gary Kitchen’s Twisted World is one that is straight forward, natural and for the most part nourishes the musical soul as it strives to show that in many cases, the world of music can be turned upside down and led astray by those with no real love for someone’s efforts. All they see is a pound sign and the greed of an extra couple of zero’s attached to it, it truly is a twisted world when that happens on all too frequent basis.

Recorded at Liverpool’s Crosstown Studios during 2013, the album is a hark back to the days when songs challenged the perception of the listener. When songs no matter who they were recorded by, offered something deeper than just buying into a way of life or the cheeky chirpy feel attached to the more humdrum but insanely and astoundingly popular contributions to music that somehow has managed to inflict themselves on the world.

There is a gentle scope, a learning of how far to push the songs on offer throughout Twisted World and within them all, Gary Kitchen and Jon Lawton give everything they possess over to making the tracks fleshy, full of substance and verve but without overstretching the meaning.

Tracks such as Freedom, the entrancing Fields of Hessian, the truth and disgust in Wage Slavery and the wondrous Find What You’re Looking For make this 2013 album a good and steady find.

The world is a crazy and mostly disturbing place; there are though elements of captured beauty and resilience which make it worth exploring and Twisted World is ripe for exploration. A genuinely interesting album!   

Ian D. Hall