Don Airey has been a full-time member of Deep Purple since replacing Jon Lord in January 2003, playing on the legendary band’s ‘Bananas’ and ‘Rapture Of The Deep’ albums and enjoying successful worldwide tours. Now, Airey steps into the spotlight’s full glare with his second solo album, ‘A Light In The Sky’, released via Mascot Records. Twenty years have slipped by since ‘K2: Tales Of Triumph And Tragedy’, a mountaineering-themed debut that featured special guests Gary Moore, Chris Thompson, the late and extremely great Cozy Powell, Colin Blunstone, Laurence Cottle and esteemed former TV newsreader Gordon Honeycombe. For ‘A Light In The Sky’, Airey has gathered together a different set of collaborators (though Laurence Cottle of Sting/Eric Clapton/Brian Eno/Bill Bruford fame once again contributes precision bass-playing), though naturally Don provides the record’s central creative thrust – an entertaining mixture of instrumental and vocal songs, from the Bladerunner-style ‘Ripples In The Fabric Of Time’ to the hook-laden hard rock of ‘Shooting Star’. And as the record’s title might suggest, there is a central unifying thread of space and space travel. Musically speaking, the album is fittingly rich and diverse. “What I had in mind was making something that sounded like a cross between Rainbow, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Jean-Michel Jarre,” continues Airey. “There was no point in making some generic hard rock album. Probably my favourite of its tracks is ‘Light In The Sky’, which dates back to my days with Colosseum II [during the late 1970s]”. Don is also known for his work with Rainbow & Ozzy Osbourne among others.