Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The difference between dealing with prohibition and living under the sentence of exclusion may be a technicality, but at least during prohibition if you knew where to have a good time, you could guarantee to find the time of your life, an approval granted by many to see the joy denied those who refuse to hear, rebuffed by those who quarrel with beauty.

Alive In Prohibition takes exclusion and throws the concept out of the window, for there is no reason to afford anyone to feel alone when there is life to be felt, to be embraced, to have bloom under the lights surrounding a stage; and whether that stage is one in which you are one in 10,000, or that you are playing to a select crowd all within one unique space, to be alive is to understand that you are included – you just have to buy a ticket and listen.

In a period of time when we have been urged to focus on the stringent, almost Victorian austere damnation, we must find ways in which to decompress, and access to art is arguably the finest way to prove to yourself that life is not to be vetoed, it is to hear your heartbeat pulse with the ticking of the universe.

It is to the beauty supplied by Neil Campbell in his tremendously unsanctioned, uninhibited display of virtuoso guitar work in a live setting that being alive is to hear the artist in full pursuit of living, and one that in the Liverpool setting of his hometown is one of magical magnificence.

Alive In Prohibition is glorious, there is no argument to that, it is a profound fact which makes the heart sing as if hears the first songbird of summer call to the sky and beating sun, and as tracks such as Through The Looking Glass in its various entwinning segments, Terra Firma, the excellent Erik’s Song, Dance To The End Of Love, the superb piece of the Tabula Rasa Suite, Ghost Story and Ghost Tango, Three Fountains, and the sheer volume of grit and determination of Secret Swim At Moonlight are presented with care and illumination, the sanctions that are placed against us are there to be torn down, to be demolished and to ask, no, to demand change in how we find space for all to become enlightened.

You don’t need to spend an evening in the company of a throng of people and the chaos that ensue, you just need to find a place where beauty and certainty is offered without impunity, even in the comfort of the snug space, you can still be Alive In Prohibition.

Ian D. Hall