Don Airey - One Of A Kind album review

Shoot out at the riff factory

Don Airey - One Of A Kind

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Don Airey - Victim of Pain

Don Airey - Victim Of Payne

1. Respect
2. All Out Of Line
3. One Of a Kind
4. Every Time I See Your Face
5. Victim Of Pain
6. Running Free
7. Lost Boys
8. Want You So Bad
9. Children Of the Sun
10. Remember to Call
11. Stay the Night
12. Pictures Of Home (Live at Fabrik 2017)
13. Since You've Been Gone (Live at Fabrik 2017)
14. I Surrender (Live at Fabrik 2017)
15. Still Got the Blues (Live at Fabrik 2017)

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With a CV that includes playing with Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne (that organ intro to Mr Crowley), Black Sabbath, Whitesnake, Judas Priest, Jethro Tull, Saxon, Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore and, for most of this century, Deep Purple, Don Airey is the keyboard maestro of British heavy rock. 

On this, his new solo album, recorded with a band including current Nazareth singer Carl Sentance and up-and-coming guitarist Simon McBride, he sheds some of his chameleonlike skin that has served him so well with his numerous employers, and gives his natural instincts a freer reign. 

Airey allows himself some personalised flourishes amid the succession of archetypal riffs, particularly on the opening Respect (reminiscent of Deep Purple’s Speed King) and the deceptively simple title track. 

The other stand-out track is Children Of The Sun, which, surprisingly, is buried towards the end of the album. 

A bonus live CD features Airey and co. playing some familiar classics.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.