Playfully pro-umlaut, Jethro Tull’s 23rd studio album, RökFlöte, began life as an LP of flute instrumentals, but ended up being a scholarly song collection exploring Norse mythology and paganism. This partly explains its title’s merger of the Icelandic word ‘Rök’, meaning ‘destiny’, and ‘Flöte’, which is German for the woodwind instrument Ian Anderson has played for decades.
“I suppose I liked the idea of toying with the flute of destiny,” smiles Tull’s venerable leader, chatting from his Wiltshire home via Zoom. Agreeably, he isn’t averse to sending himself up.
One doesn’t really ‘interview’ Ian Anderson; you hang on while his brain shoots off at tangents. His answers are long, winding roads, because that’s how he likes to field the questions you might occasionally manage to interject. Not that Prog isn’t delighted to listen. We’ll take verbosity over sullen guardedness any day.
RökFlöte follows-up last year’s The Zealot Gene, and constitutes one of the shortest gaps between successive Tull albums since 1980. To what, wonders Prog, do we owe this welcome burst of productivity?
