Ian Gillan
One Eye To Morocco

"...'The eye turned towards Morocco' is a Polish saying when you are talking face to face with someone, but at the same time, it's obvious a mile away that your attention is focused elsewhere. Like when you're in the middle of a conversation with an old friend and suddenly, behind him, a beautiful young girl with stunning legs walks by! The eye will inevitably fall there...".

"...Yes, the old friend in question is Deep Purple while the model that attracts my gaze towards Morocco is the music contained in this solo album of mine. Morocco, in short, is my dream. My escape from the everyday..."

_{(Ian Gillan on "One Eye To Morocco")}

 

More than ten years after the last "Dreamcatcher," the London vocalist returns with a new solo album that couldn't be further from the classic Purple-sound, as he declares in the snippet of an interview published on milanoweb.com above. No hard rock, then, in favor of blues, soul, folk and even ethnic harmonies for a work with a delicious retro flavor, conceived and written in the spring of 2008 during one of the rare breaks from the never-ending tour that the purple lads have been having us accustomed to for years.

The tireless Ian thus creates a danceable, intense, and exotic LP, where the endless guitar or keyboard solos typical of his parent band are missing while wind instruments (trumpet, harmonica, and an extraordinary sax played by Joe Mennonna) and percussion handled by Howard Wilson stand out. To better render the concept of the album, the Deep Purple leader has declared that if he went on tour with the album (for now, nothing is planned, Purple comes first) he would create a show halfway between a rock concert and a belly dance, accompanied not only by his band but also by choristers and dancers.

The journey begins with "One Eye To Morocco", a sort of musical dawn in a distant African land, flowing with its dreamy pace reciting
"All day / Sitting alone in my room / Waiting for no-one to call me / Lost in a dream of my own", then proceeding with the rockish "No Lotion For That", written like most of the songs by Gillan in the company of Steve Morris, also a guitarist in our previous solo outings. "Don't Stop" is a splendid Latin-flavored tune, while "Change My Ways" (based on the harmonica and the singer's voice), "Better Days" and "Ultimate Groove" (the last two written by the other guitarist, Michael Lee Jackson) take us to the blues side.

"Texas State Of Mind" is a good rock'n'roll but turns out to be the flattest moment of the album along with the repetitive "Deal With It", which even features an electronic drum. The oriental "Girl Goes To Show" (one of the highest peaks of the entire work) and "The Sky Is Falling" are still excellent, but it is perhaps with the final pair that the album reaches its peak: "It Would Be Nice" and especially "Always The Traveller" are two excellent compositions that close a second side perhaps even better than the first. Specifically, "Always The Traveller" acts as a counterpoint to the initial title track, reviving its dreamy air with even more pathos, creating a beautiful ballad where an inspired sax paints the most evocative notes.

Essential features of the long-playing album are the ethnic atmospheres that pervade all the compositions more or less evidently and top-level lyrics (contrary to what we are used to, especially in episodes of purple memory) narrated by a seductive voice that does not try to emulate past glories but wisely relies on its still enviable timbre.

If you wish to be enveloped by a whirlwind of warm and varied sounds, this album is just right for you...