Classic Rock magazine is running a competition in which they are offering 5 Deep Purple hardback special edition magazines signed by both Ians. The competition is apparently open worldwide. Head over there and fill in the form to enter.

(Updated Apr 23) Deep Purple are scheduled to appear on German late night comedy show TV Total this Wednesday, April 24. We don´t have any details about the taping and if there are any tickets left but the broadcast will start at around 11 pm CET on German private TV channel Pro Sieben.

This time they will perform All The Time In The World. This show generally has no mimed performances, so they are most definitely going to perform the song live in the studio. We don´t know if there will be any interview with the band but our guess is not, as live performances are usually near the end of the show without any interviews (except the host personally thanking the guys).

After the first airing the whole show, as well as clips from live performance, should be available for viewing online at their website (look under ‘Mittwoch 24. April’).

The band have already performed on TV Total in 2005 (Clearly Quite Absurd Rapture of the Deep and Smoke on the Water with Michael Bradford standing in for Steve Morse).

The same day, April 24th, the band will also appear on the morning show Morgenmagazin which starts at 5:30 (yawn) and is aired on ARD and ZDF.

After these TV appearances the band will be in Berlin from April 26 to 28 to shoot a video (and undoubtedly, do more publicity).

Thanks to Milan Fahrnholz, Yvonne Osthausen, and Burkee PR for the info.

The last time there was this long a gap between Deep Purple studio albums was in the period 1976 – 1984. Back then Amazon was the forest which no doubt provided the cardboard for the record sleeve, not the company you most likely bought the cd from!

In the days preceding the release of Perfect Strangers, there was a playback and radio interview on BBC Radio 1, which we all recorded and listened to before running out on the Monday morning to get the record.

Today, with the release only a few days away we are lucky enough to receive an advance copy in the post, although if we lived in Denmark, where calendars are different…….

I recall in the early listens of Perfect Strangers that actually I wasn’t that sure about the album. A bit too Rainbow if you like… No such worries now. This is assuredly the most Deep Purple album I think I have heard in a long time!

The sound is BIG. Actually I’ve had to turn the subwoofer down a bit, rather than the volume down… rattling ornaments were getting a bit annoying, but this will sound fantastic over headphones, or in the car, which is likely how it will most often be listened to.

Starting gently with ‘A Simple Song’, the experience is like being gently lulled into a false sense of security, before BLAM! and we’re off. This song by itself is almost worth the wait, but very quickly you realise it’s not a one-off, “Weirdestan” follows, with almost Colin Towns-like keyboard sections.

And a lack of overly fussy guitar solos. The riffing is great, and the interplay between guitar and keyboards is fantastic. At times the keys are reminiscent of Jon, at others perhaps Keith Emerson.

Obviously the spirit of Jon is felt throughout, and indeed the album itself is dedicated to the much missed founding father of the band.

But, despite Gillan himself saying he didn’t do much with this album, except the singing and the songs, the feeling is of adventure, of a band experimenting in a way that perhaps hasn’t happened in the Purple family since the Gillan Band days.

I find myself wanting to tell you about every nuance, but at the same time, sorry guys. You need to hear this to believe it.

You’ll have All The Time In The World!

Vinyl and CD editions of NOW What?! have made it into the eager hands of fans in Århus, Denmark.

While the rest of us have our patience tested, here’s photo proof from this morning…

Roger Glover chatted with Detroit’s radio station 94.7 WCSX about Now what?!, ‘live in the studio’ approach, his songwriting philosophy, and being simple.

Listen to it at wcsx.com.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Mathieu posted this as a comment to Stathis’ review and we thought it deserves to be promoted to a separate post.

I was able to hear NOW What?! before the press conference the two Ians gave in Paris two days ago.

Let me share my thougts.

The first thing that strikes me is I’m unable to compare what I heard with anything else the band has done before. Sure this is Deep Purple, you can not miss it. And this is Mk Morse, no doubt about it. But it ends here for me. Rapture of the Deep was a kind of a synthesis of the three previous records, this one sounds like a new start. This is no Purpendicular meets Abandon as I read a lot. Not to me at least.

The reason why? This album seems to be the child of seven years of non stop touring. I’m pretty sure Bob Ezrin said to the good guys “Here is what I like from your gigs, let’s put it on a record”. Here and there you can find a lot of what Deep Purple MkVIII does on stage. The result is the album has a true live feeling never heard before. Very exctiting.

It’s obvious Bob Ezrin just perfectly understood what Deep Purple is about in 2013, and took the best from the musicians. His input seems massive. Sure the band wrote the music. But Ezrin was right behind them, doing like a director. He’s been the outside ears the band needed for years…

I’m pretty sure he is the reason why there is so much (good) work on vocal melodies for instance. To be honest, Gillan’s lines were a little bit easy and lazy last time around. Not this time, and that’s a heck of a good progress. Almost everything is catchy, you can’t stop huming it the rest of the day. Little doubt he told Steve Morse to slow down a little bit. There are almost no super quick chromatic solos on the album.

What makes the album so strong is that there seems to be no fillers on it. Even the lightest tracks have something to give. That what not the case with Rapture of the Deep to tell the truth. Back to the easy and lazy approach the band was able to fall into… But not anymore! Proof of that is no track sounds like another one on NOW What?! Diversity is the word.

I won’t go into a track by track, especially after just one hearing. But I can tell you there is a standout number on the record, a Deep Purple classic on the making. “Out of Hand” has the majesty and the power of Perfect Strangers and Battle rages on, no kidding! Other very good tracks are the two singles (way better in their full version, wait to hear the key solo on Hell to pay!), A Simple Song, Uncommun Man and Weirdistan. At worst, there seems to be a soft spot, but Blood from a Stone and Above and beyond could very well be growers…

All in all, I am impressed. And excited. Job well done, gentlemen!

Mathieu

Adrenaline Mob is a project of ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy with Symphony X vocalist Russell Allen. Guitar player Mike Orlando and bassist John Moyer (Disturbed) round up the band. They have released an album of original material last year, followed this March by an EP of covers, with Rainbow’s Kill the King among them:

Ian Gillan and Ian Paice did a press conference in Paris on April 18 and ventured pretty far from the beaten track (as far as those promotional interviews go, which often sound like the same canned answers to the same canned questions):

A longer video of the press conference (with much worse audio):

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Part 3 of Roger Glover’s diaries covering the vocal sessions in Nashville has been published.

OCTOBER 2012

1 Monday
Up at dawn trying different lyrics for Weirdistan. In the studio, IG starts A Simple Song and makes good progress, finishing writing as we go. Lunch at a local kebab place makes me ill and although we work all day, I feel rough. Having used Bob’s lovely (and legendary) Fender Precision on some tracks, I am keen on getting one of my own. Kat accompanies me to a guitar shop where I try half a dozen expensive vintage Fenders but am not impressed. I’m just about to leave when I’m shown a salmon pink Fender Squier Precision, made in China. Salmon pink? I don’t know if I like that, it’s a bit bright. However, when I hear it through an amp, it sounds and plays great. I ask how much and he says something like two nine. Of course, I assume he means $2,900. No, he means $290. The salmon pink is looking not so bad. $300 with a case – amazing. It’s second hand but is like new. Whether I ever use it on stage is another matter but I have to get it. The salmon pink looks quite attractive now.

Read more on deeppurple-nowwhat.com

Deep Purple will perform this year at the Montreux Jazz festival on July 19, with tickets going on sale in the morning of April 19. Also appearing on the bill for July 19 is a member of another band intimately connected with this Swiss town — Brian May, with the festival director Mathieu Jaton strongly hinting that he is “likely to jam” with Purple.