Top Releases. By rights I should slate this unmercifully as a hopelessly dated piece of prog, so far up itself it’s seeing daylight – but I can’t; something about this album is simply wonderful!
Don Airey is the keyboards wizard with Deep Purple and this is his second solo album – 20 years after his first, the concept album ‘K2: Tales of Triumph & Tragedy’! As with ‘K2’, Airey is going for the big concept – Space and astronomy – and it is filled with loads of progtastic keyboards and high pitched vocals with titles like ‘Ripples In The Fabric Of Time’ and ‘Andromeda M31’, not to mention incredibly fast drumming, screaming guitar solos and the occasional violin. But there is a passion about the album that transcends its backward leanings and it has the capacity to get the surliest of heads a’banging in time to the most ‘purply’ bits. When it slows down, as on ‘Love You Too Much’, there is still a huge expanse to the sound and on a decent system it fills the room like little I’ve heard in a few years. Most of the album is instrumentally based and he has managed to infuse it with a real variation in styles and paces and while it is pretentious on occasion is still has an honest feeling to the music – this is the music that Don Airey has had in his heart for years and now he has managed to get it out on record.
Airey has been associated with more classic rock albums than almost anyone else I can imagine – ‘Blizzard of Oz’, that was him on keys along with credits for ‘Diary of a Madman’ and the notches on his keyboards include Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Gary Moore, Babe Ruth, Jethro Tull, Whitesnake, UFO, Brian May and even Andrew Lloyd Webber(!) – the list goes on for ever – and he has earned the right to make his own statement.
This is an album you will either love or detest. Anyone with an ear to classic rock with classical or jazz leanings should take this to their bosom and cherish it.
Posted by neocartez 
Posted by neocartez 