Author Archives: admin

John Williams, Gig Review. The Cornmarket, Cornmarket Acoustic Festival. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Watching John Williams perform, no matter the setting, has the same feeling of contentment thrust upon you as someone giving you a five star hotel room for the weekend and charging you only a pound for the pleasure. As he stood with guitar in hand and the guitar/violinist of choice, and with Elizabeth Kearney from Nighthowl by his side, the moment of absolute enjoyment was stretched out and unfolded at a rate that would reflect the day, laid back but with the sense of history being made and for that John Williams gave a near exemplary performance in which all assembled revelled in.

John Williams, Gig Review. The Cornmarket, Cornmarket Acoustic Festival. Liverpool. full post

(408 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Caro Emerald, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Caro Emerald’s 2013 album, The Shocking Miss Emerald, has set more than a tone for music in the second decade in the 21st Century, it has set a bar that matches the intensity and atmosphere that Kate Bush in the 70s, Madonna in the 80s and Tori Amos in the 90s managed to frame and capture with their pivotal albums. As she came on stage for the first time in Liverpool, the mystique, the allure and the talent followed her, the voice captivated the audience completely and the music enveloped all like a comfortable and much loved blanket.

Caro Emerald, Gig Review. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. full post

(501 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Richie Grice.

Richie Grice cuts a commanding but ultimately loveable figure as he sits before you. His love of comedy radiates outwards from the very time you meet him and he certainly knows his stuff and his ready laugh is easy and a joyous thing to hear whenever you mention something that tickles his own funny bone.

With rehearsals well under way for Bon Voyage at The Epstein Theatre, which stars the superb Lindzi Germain and the legendary Mickey Finn, I was able to catch ten precious minutes with the man who co-wrote the play with Paul Nicholson at The Garden at FACT and ask him his thoughts on the play and on comedy.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Richie Grice. full post

(1028 words, estimated 4:07 mins reading time)

Snakecharmer, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For an album, a piece of recording history, to hold so much individual and seemingly disparate talent and turn it into a record such wealth and barnstorming enjoyment is either locked away in the recesses of the Rock music fan’s mind, ready to be spieled out in a lull of conversation in a pub one Friday night or actually physically existing in the form of Snakecharmer’s self-titled and cracking debut album.

Snakecharmer, Album Review. full post

(410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Rovo And System 7, Phoenix Rising. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Sometimes coming across a group or project that you don’t know about can be cathartic for the soul, for it reminds you of why you fell desperately in love with the chosen genre in the first place.  With enough nods to the intricate genius of Mike Oldfield, the eclectic progressive Jazz of groups such as Brand X, the majesty of Pink Floyd and a whole host of Progressive rock bands entwined with an art house feel, Phoenix Rising, an album of colossal combination by Rovo and System 7, is an album that will blow any pre-conceptions the listener may have when it comes to the world of Japanese Progressive Rock.

Rovo And System 7, Phoenix Rising. Album Review. full post

(394 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Iron Maiden, Dance Of Death, 10th Anniversary Retrospective.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Dance of Death, as album titles go, it’s a fair one to place on an album cover especially by arguably the U.K.’s leading Heavy Metal band enjoying a new renaissance with Adrian Smith and lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson back within the helm. It conjurors up thoughts of a last waltz, which thankfully will be suspended for as long as possible, of a macabre game with the Grim Reaper, or in this case the band’s long time mascot Eddie doing a plausible impression of the figure in black as if taken from a gruesome version of the film The Seventh Seal, as Death itself holds out its hand and asks you to join together.

Iron Maiden, Dance Of Death, 10th Anniversary Retrospective. full post

(1118 words, estimated 4:28 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Jo Bywater.

Yorkshire born, Liverpool based singer songwriter Jo Bywater is one of those individuals in life that, no matter how many times you meet her, interview her or just share a moment talking about poetry, music and films, she just illuminates the room with the kind of unexpected passion reserved for those that have released a dozen albums or even give non-stop interviews to the awaiting public. There is more to this young woman though than just being intuitive and having the remarkable skill of having many layers within her lyric writing, there is a gentleness that belies the tough Yorkshire shell.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement, An Interview With Jo Bywater. full post

(1408 words, estimated 5:38 mins reading time)

About Time, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, Lydia Wilson, Richard Cordery, Joshua McGuire, Tom Hollander, Margaret Robbie, Will Merrick, Vanessa Kirby, Tommy Hughes, Clemmie Dugdale, Harry Hadden-Paton, Mitchell Mullen, Lisa Eichom, Jenny Rainsford, Catherine Steadman, Graham Richard Howgego, Kenneth Hazeldine, Natasha Powell, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths.

About Time, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool. full post

(657 words, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)

Black Spiders, This Savage Land. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Just when all hope seemed lost, when the chips weren’t just down, they had been fried, assaulted by fat and consumed with all the gourmet finery available to those in a busy city centre on a Saturday night out, the British Heavy Rock brigade gets the shot in the arm it has craved since Black Sabbath’s phenomenal album 13 was released. Sheffield’s Black Spiders fit the bill perfectly as one of Britain’s Rocks finest as they survey the wreckage that the Metal scene has become and This Savage Land is more than grateful.

Black Spiders, This Savage Land. Album Review. full post

(417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Touchstone, Oceans Of Time. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The world may be perpetually on the brink of meltdown as it struggles from one crisis to another with little room to take a breath before the next impeding disaster needs patching up or perhaps covering up; however whilst there are groups such as Touchstone who can fill the emptiness that the soul can feel when living through times such as we do, then there is always a glimmer of hope that a bleak day can have some element of brightness to it.

Touchstone, Oceans Of Time. Album Review. full post

(394 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)