Paula Fong: Chestnut Mare. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Whilst we should all know it, it is always worth driving home the reminder that to judge anyone by appearances is to deny yourself of the possibility of having your heart, your senses, and your mind opened to new opportunities, to have the world shaken; when you decide to dismiss based on any pre- conceived ideals or likes, then that denial is based in unreasonable assumptions of talent, that you see a field full of trees but dismiss the fruit of one as nothing but inedible experience.

Paula Fong: Chestnut Mare. E.P. Review. full post

(420 words, 1 image, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

The Rheingans Sisters: Start Close In. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The balance of our world is at stake, the precipice is staringly close, our heels are clinging on for the sake of our sanity, but the demons, the shadows of whispers that grab at our ankles out of sight have started to close in; only a truth of art can hope to bless our souls enough to bring us back from the edge, but we must allow the mind to Start Close In on healing before the temptation to let ourselves fall completely, utterly, over the edge of the precipice.

The Rheingans Sisters: Start Close In. Album Review. full post

(387 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Andrew Combs: Dream Pictures. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

We must snatch every minute available to us, every moment must be handled with care and with passion, but it also must lay the foundation of a dream that you pursue till it appears fully formed, no matter the cost to Time, we must be ready to deny silence in the mind in the promise of the fully formed belief; and if we can dream it, then eventually we picture it, and then we live it.

Andrew Combs: Dream Pictures. Album Review. full post

(359 words, 1 image, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Scarla O’ Horror: Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We have become used to living in a world where to be unique is to be viewed with suspicion, and to be amongst the masses is to be considered safe, to be protected in a shelter of the benign and the harmless. It is almost as we have taken the opportunity to cram every pore of those willing take artistic risks with stuffing and insulation just so we can exhibit them in a museum of the peculiar as a warning, as a cautionary tale to the timid and the apprehensive masses.

Scarla O’ Horror: Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses. E.P. Review. full post

(366 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Thokozile Collective. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Ladysmith Black Mambazo arguably were bought to the attention of the wider world in 1986 when the sound of Paul Simon’s internationally acclaimed album Graceland was heard by an audience willing, desperate to investigate the muscle of music from a country and its indigenous people who had long been in the shade of popular recording; and yet as the listener takes in the beauty and exuberance of Thokozile Collective’s seriously cool self-titled debut album, that sound from the sizzling memory of Africa once lauded, marks a return to the ears as the U.K. based sextet roar into action with a Jazz beat legacy intact.

Thokozile Collective. Album Review. full post

(401 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Jon Gold: Guanabara Eyes. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * *

To set your eyes on the vision before you, to take in the natural beauty of the largest natural harbour in the world and understand the depth of history fought over in its name and the loss of what was once a flourishing and diverse eco-system, is to feel a bitterness of humanity’s actions in the face of environment.

Environment is everything, without it we flounder in space, our attempts at creating a lasting heartbeat of memory is negated by the damnation that the beauty we could have utilised to educate and inspire the release, the song and the tune in our heart.

Jon Gold: Guanabara Eyes. Album Review. full post

(325 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Alien: Romulus. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Mercad, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Rosie Ede, Soma Simon, Bence Okeke, Victor Orizu, Robert Bobroczkyi, Trevor Newlin, Annemarie Griggs, Ian Holm, Daniel Betts.

If you truly think back and think of all the films you claim to have been frightened by, where true terror has caused your heart to miss a beat, where you have felt your nerves shredded by the appearance of a creature so terrifying, then surely it can only be a handful; and then just one of them can be the mother of them all…Alien.

Alien: Romulus. Film Review. full post

(510 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

Lost Soul 2: Smigger’s Wrecked Head. Theatre Review. (2024). Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Paul Duckworth, Lindzi Germain, Michael Hawkins, Jennifer Hynes, Catherine Rice, Andrew Schofield, Lenny Wood.

Time may offer the dangling cries of surprising future in front of us, but it never truly prepares us for the rude awakening of change when it comes to becoming a parent, and then the drama of becoming a grandparent. It is in the shock of how our lives adjust in the face of age and new life that the alter of self-expression is diminished, it undergoes a transformation that in all honest so few of us are prepared for.

Lost Soul 2: Smigger’s Wrecked Head. Theatre Review. (2024). Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(360 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Lindsey Buckingham: 20th Century Lindsey. Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Lindsey Buckingham 20th Century Lindsey (CD) Box Set - Picture 1 of 1

To look back at what we achieved in the past and see it without blemish is a sign of arrogance that we can ill afford to entertain; to be humble and acknowledge that we could have taken a different approach is to understand that whilst we may be lauded by the fan, it is our own personal critic we should be aware of…no regrets, but justifiable frustration that perhaps the strength we looked for in that moment was indeed just the start, the prelude before the explosion of the sublime to come.

Lindsey Buckingham: 20th Century Lindsey. Box Set Review. full post

(487 words, 1 image, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Andrew J. Newall: My Lucky Charm. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We tend to think of the concept album as one that can be seminal, gargantuan in its outlook, full bodied in say the realms of Pink Floyd, Green Day, Jethro Tull, The Who, and even the magnificent aspirations of the smooth voice from R ‘n’ B and Soul’s Marvin Gaye in his undeniable classic What’s Going On, but we forget that at times the concept is more than just an anthem, a set of songs placed together to rock a stadium and declare, almost punk like, of the disaffection and destruction of a human soul in a theatrical sense, but it is also a celebration of an oral tradition; a bringing together the life of someone not in the public eye but one who is just as every bit the hero or heroine deserving a tale.

Andrew J. Newall: My Lucky Charm. Album Review. full post

(390 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)