![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan8.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/morse.jpg)
NOW What?! – on the streets now
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…
Simple is a difficult thing
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.
A new start
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 — Kill the King
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:
They’ve got elephants!
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.
The Nashville diaries redux
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
Down to Montreux
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.
Secret balletic past and inhaling with more pathos
Ian Gillan and Ian Paice have appeared on france24.com to promote Now what?!. Get the scoop on Gillan’s secret balletic past and other things at their website (the interview starts about 4:20 into the video).
An audio track of the EPK chat that will be included on the DVD of the deluxe edition of the album:
Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.
The fingers write them…
This is an excerpt from the promotional interview with the band recorded in December 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJHa6aeowE
90 seconds from Out Of Hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFkj0rUM6g0
A slightly different excerpt from the same inerview as the above, this one was posted by the record company:
Thanks to topartistvideos for posting it and to Andrey Gusenkov for bringing it to your attention.
Gillan and Paice on BBC Radio 2
Both Ians will be on the BBC Radio 2 show Simon Mayo’s Drivetime on Tuesday, April 23. The show is on the air between 17:00 and 19:00. As a matter of rule, BBC programming is available online from their site for a week after the air date.
Thanks to Peter Cross for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing