Johnny Warman - Walking Into Mirrors

Johnny Warman

Walking Into Mirrors

1981

New Wave Synthpop

England

Tracklist:


01 Walking Into Mirrors
02 Radio Active
03 Searchlights
04 Martian Summer
05 Screaming Jets
06 Three Minutes
07 Will You Dance With Me?
08 (SOS) Sending Out Signals
09 Dancing Dolls
10 Fantastic Light


     "Born in Bethnal Green, London, Johnny Warman made his stage debut as a child, when his local school choir was judged proficient enough to appear in two productions at London's prestigious Royal Opera House, alongside Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi. By the mid-'70s, however, he had gravitated to rock, forming the band Bearded Lady and releasing a 1975 single, Rock Star. It went nowhere and, when the band split, Warman signed solo with Ringo Starr's Ring-O label, releasing a single in 1977 and a Germany-only album, Hour Glass, two years later. By 1980, Warman had formed a new band, Three Minutes - following their breakup, he took much of the band's repertoire for his next solo album, 1981's Walking Into Mirrors, released by Elton John's Rocket label. Recorded with Peter Gabriel's then-current band, with Gabriel himself guesting on backing vocals on the single Screaming Jets, Warman found himself with a major Australian hit. (...) A masterful, electronics-driven slab of wartorn paranoia whose edginess was only amplified by the presence of Peter Gabriel on effectively keening backing vocals. (...) Hints of the John Foxx-era Ultravox (not to mention the inevitable Gary Numan, too) shine through some of the sparser numbers, an impression heightened by both Warman's own, occasionally robotic vocal intonations and the sense that the entire album is an idiot dancing on the edge of Armageddon; the early '80s, of course, saw civilization perched on one of its way-too-regular nuclear precipices, and Walking Into Mirrors echoes both the scientific realities and the science-fiction romances of that scenario. (...) Unfortunately, the follow-up, 1983's From the Jungle to the New Horizons, did little, prompting Warman to abandon his own recording career and concentrate on songwriting".
(Dave Thompson, All-Music Guide)