Category Archives: Music

Shadow Captain: Abbesses. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

We have been denied much over the last five years, we live in a time when the fracturing of the artist’s soul has become not only normal, but lauded by those with an intent bent in destruction and chaos, and instead of taking arms against these agents of turmoil and manufactured confusions, we hide underground, our retorts spoken softly as not to offend the words of people we should not care of, we creep around the Abbesses of the Paris Metro, we slink in the darkness of New York’s Subway, just so we can be assured of not being accused of bringing love to a world of hate.

Shadow Captain: Abbesses. Album Review. full post

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

Gary Moore: Live – From Baloise Session. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Some legends are taken far too early for the public to comprehend, the sense of unfinished business looms large in the conscious.

What we hold onto is the hope that those who have featured long in our lives have left us more than memories, they have squirreled away nuggets of gold in which the listener is given more than anticipated promise, they are endowed with faith; for the passing of a hero, especially one so prolific as one of the true greats of the Blues, Gary Moore, will always have something for the fans even in the event of Time’s inevitable passing.

Gary Moore: Live – From Baloise Session. Album Review. full post

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

I, Claudia: Storms & Silver Linings. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Storms gather, it is in the very fabric of existence that we must expect upheaval, but if we weather the storm, if we seize the silver linings on show as the lightning illuminates their positions and meanings to us, then we may find something unexpected, a tale of the unforeseen presented as a gift to us.

I, Claudia’s message in Storms & Silver Linings is one of impressionable intimacy, and for the woman behind the name, Claudia McKenzie, the intricacy of arrangements and vocals beguile the senses for the first time listener and confirm certainties of those who have followed the maker of the self-confessed chaos and essence.

I, Claudia: Storms & Silver Linings. Album Review. full post

(344 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

Debbie Bond: Live At The Song Theater. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The feel of the raw emotion of the Blues in the 21st Century is now a given, the lean years of the genre firmly displaced in time, smoothed over as a gentle reminder to all that if you take a moment or a movement for granted then eventually it will grind to a halt and turn to dust; and yet the listener cannot but be helped drawn to a time when the Blues was at its zenith, the golden age of the sultry and the smoky bars, where imagination and the flow of music went hand in hand and leads you to front table by the stage, directly in the eye line of the steady and composed talent acting as the Muse and love for the night.

Debbie Bond: Live At The Song Theater. Album Review. full post

(450 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols: Live In The U.S.A. 1978

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The phrase, so well-known, repeated, and misused by some who find ways to sneer at the moment in time that the Sex Pistols managed to install themselves briefly at the very centre of the storm that rightfully gave Britain the kick it needed to finally start pulling away from the Victorian straitjacket that had bound tightly to the sensibilities and rigid indoctrination of the public, somehow frames the three cd release of the band’s tumultuous time in the United States with a kind of consummate ease.

Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols: Live In The U.S.A. 1978 full post

(551 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

Helloween: March Of Time: The Best Of 40 Years. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Time was…and time remains in the hands of those willing to be than a bystander, a voyeur, an observer of events, and whilst it is noble to be a credible witness to Time’s passing, to actively get involved in its storm, to pursue an agenda in which your name or your art adds the eddy and the wake, to the whirlwind above and the whirlpool below…that is the gift, and the curse of Time, we are addicted to its allure and if we are not participating fully, then it will leave as nothing more than an onlooker drowning in the very air supplied by the drum that marks its passing.

Helloween: March Of Time: The Best Of 40 Years. Album Review. full post

(450 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Samantha Fish: Paper Doll. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Samantha Fish’s track record has been nigh on exemplary, every album, every collaboration, has been immersed in detail and insight; it is proof that alongside others who have given the Blues, not only a rebirth, but a reinvention in the 21st Century, that given the right person and their determination the genre can exist and flourish in a world now dominated by soundbites and ten second videos designed for the mass population.

Samantha Fish: Paper Doll. Album Review. full post

(428 words, 1 image, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Maddison Breen: Odesa. Single Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The continual praise we lay at the feet of some artists is always a pleasure, it is a reminder that constant practise and unbound talent go hand in hand, that it is an even split between dedication and release of emotional endurance, and in Maddison Breen’s latest single Odesa, the beating heart of fearlessness and objectivity in truth is unrepentantly gorgeous.

Maddison Breen: Odesa. Single Review. full post

(277 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

Vicki Peterson & John Cowsill: Long After The Fire. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Long After The Fire turns to embers, we can still resurrect the feeling and the emotions felt as the shadows thrown against walls and our souls make us feel the comfort of warm memories, of connecting us to a past where myths and magic were concocted and spoken of in reverential tones, and where those that whispered of images and spirits could be seen as the perceptive wise people of our times.

Vicki Peterson & John Cowsill: Long After The Fire. Album Review. full post

(414 words, 1 image, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Ally Venable: Money & Power. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There is no doubt that Blues as an artform needed to reinvent itself in the 21st Century as it found itself on the point of collapse, of suffering self-destruction to its lack of ability to coax and lure new fans to its ailing body. There is assurance that Blues was dying, and even a resurrection of the genre would only give it a limited time scale of survival as decent and legends remained, but nobody was willing to take their place in the heated arena.

Ally Venable: Money & Power. Album Review. full post

(432 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)