Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We are granted so little in this world, some perhaps more than others but the basics that come to us should be held on to with dear life, with purpose and with dignity. Our senses for one, if we are fortunate enough to see, hear, touch, speak, then we are indeed blessed, we have the freedom to wonder, to imagine, the liberty of speech, and the freedom of sound; a freedom we should never allow to be taken from us, a freedom that is as beautiful as one day of Sunshine in a month of rain.

Freedom is such that it has the advantage of being able to look elsewhere for inspiration, not to be confined by the restrictions of what it imposes on itself, not to waste time by continually demanding to stay undeveloped. It is a freedom that comes with expanding the original thought and treading, lightly at first, into a new way of believing in your life, and your art.

Freedom of Sound is the calling card of Alan Cunningham and Steve Harrison, a pair to whom pursuing a musical dream together brings out the sound of Sunshine, and with the addition of Amanda Lyons on vocals, that one day in the rain becomes the glorious memory of summer’s past, of cool delivered voice in the garden surrounded by the leafy green approach of piano, organ, bass and synthesisers; a glistening moment of dew on the lawn that holds the attention of the onlooker for all their lives.

With the songs Solitude Bay, I Am Your Friend, Readin’ The Signs, Dancing In The Rain and Every Step of the Way all giving the album depth, a richness of the two distinct tapestries being heard, the Sunshine provided by the threesome is beautifully understood and the once rigid format that we all cling to at times, granted leave, what remains is the sense of the experiment and the clean cut voice of Ms. Lyons giving joy, a calmness in the day surrounded by rain.

A tremendous debut album from Freedom of Sound, the honesty to liberate yourself from what is expected and bring to the crowd another you is to be congratulated; it is the Sunshine we search for.

Ian D. Hall