Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There will always be those that see life as a strict application of black and white, they dismiss the abstract because as far as they are concerned there is only one way to exist and they will happily tell others that they need to get a real life, to be sensible, to be part of the machine; they believe that you can only be happy if you ignore the creative and the imagined, that to have a fantasy is a waste of time.

There is no such thing as a waste of time if you are actively engaging in what makes you happy, makes others doff their hats in appreciation, and no matter what, you do not have to choose between the physicality of the actual or the beauty of the abstract as long as what you produce is immersed fully in the authentic and the driven.

Real Or Imagined, to believe you must choose between them is a conspiracy of self, to understand you can stride between the two and make them work is valid and unquestionable, and for Jonathan Markwood Hoo-Hah Conspiracy it is a set of songs that step out of the shadows of the band’s previous album, Psychoacusis, with a deserved swagger and style. To know that the preceding recording was in itself particularly terrific, then it gives the listener a wonderful chill down the spine as the excitement reveals in its 2020 counterpart.

With a weaved lyrical pace which is utterly absorbing and oozes confidence throughout, and music which is happy to push the boundary of invention and the sonic visual, tracks such as Hunker Down, Gilbert Wensley, I Will Follow You Always, They Say She’s Gone and the explosive Boom! combine, merge, and then burst with fabulous intent all over the listener’s senses, the sense of real and imagined is not just a theory, but one steeped in truth, an honest urgency that declares that you can have both senses of self, that you don’t have to choose, that Real or Imagined is two sides of the same beautiful authentic existence.

Ian D. Hall