Album of the day - Ian Anderson (Walk Into Light)

[BlueHammer85]

Walk into Light (1983) is the debut solo album released by Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson. (The album A was originally intended to be released as an Ian Anderson album, but instead was released as a Jethro Tull album.) In many ways Walk into Light is a two-hander, with Anderson working closely with then keyboard player in Jethro Tull, Peter-John Vettese. The repetitive melody from the first track, "Fly By Night", was later used in the main element in the original theme music to the 1998 TV series All Saints, without attribution.

Despite being an Ian Anderson solo album, the album was actually the most collaborative work Anderson had ever done, as Peter-John Vettese co-wrote five songs and had a strong influence on the album's style and sound


1. Fly By Night
2. Made in England
3. Walk Into Light
4. Trains
5. End Game
6. Black and White Television
7. Toad in the Hole
8. Looking For Eden
9. User-Friendly
10. Different Germany

Review 206

If you're not a big fan of Jethro Tull then you may not have heard of this album, the first solo from the lead singer and one of the most famous rock flutist players (not sure there's too many of them to be fair!) that aside Anderson is multi talented and can play a wide variety of instruments aswell as sing, he was a pinnacle figure in the prog rock era and this album at a time when prog rock was entering a more sympathizer/electronic era - This was not well received and seemed not to chart too well, in fact it completely bombed ; maybe the more electronic direction Anderson went down was not to the liking of Jethro fans and perhaps under the banner of 'Jethro Tull' and with less electronic/drum machine sounds this could have done better, Anderson admitted looking back he regretted not using real drums -
however there's some good prog rock songs on here and this album went a bit harshly under the radar - love the opener 'Fly By Night' really good build up sequenced strings before his flute enters the melody, a couple of great clips on youtube live of this. 'Made In England' is the more Jethro Tull sound and the proggiest track on the album, towards the end it is more dark 'User-Freindly' and the political 'Different Germany' with the general theme of this whole album being the challenges of modern life.

6.8/10