To be sure Ritchie Blackmore will be remembered for his work with DEEP PURPLE and to a lesser extent, RAINBOW and likely not at all for his foray into "Renaissance music" and that truly is a shame because despite his great and glorious contributions to Hard Rock music it is with his current work and muse that he is most impressive.

When Blackmore declared his intention to leave the world of Rock behind in favor of Renaissance folk music everyone thought that he would be back after a record or two, a recharging basically is what everyone thought. Turns out this is what the man was meant to do and the fact that he found a partner that shared his vision and his home made the situation far too comfortable to leave and so now there is a third disc, "FIRES AT MIDNIGHT" released with no sign of a return to Hard Rock.

"SHADOW OF THE MOON" is the first flight of BLACKMORE'S NIGHT and for all that it accomplishes in establishing this project as something apart from Blackmore's other work it is over thought and falls into cliché far too often. The playing is inspired but not to the level you expect of a legend especially one who has forsaken what has made his status.

For a good part of the disc Blackmore's guitar is secondary to the rest of what makes up the ensemble and that isn't what people were looking for in a group who's name includes "Blackmore." There are some pretty nifty things scattered about, the addition of Ian Anderson's flute on "Play Minstrel Play" for instance, but better things are to come.

"UNDER A VIOLET MOON" is a head first dive into the deep end of Blackmore's view of Renaissance and Medieval folk as interpreted by an electric guitarist on acoustic instruments. Hard to follow that description? Well, so was/is this record until you blot the memory of "Smoke on the Water" from your mind and accept it as its own entity.

Candice Night has a beautiful voice and serves as Blackmore's ultimate muse and together they realize the vision and that is what makes this record a winner. It is hard to pick apart the disc for its best tracks but I find "Morning Star" quite nice to replay ad infinitum as well as "Gone with the Wind" if mostly for the electric guitar solo.

John Ford makes an appearance here as vocalist with Candice Night on "Wind in the Willows" and a version of the RAINBOW track, "Self Portrait" finishes up the disc in stunning fashion. A more entertaining hour of music has yet to be written by Blackmore.

"FIRES AT MIDNIGHT" is the latest chapter in the Medieval meandering of Monsignor Blackmore and Madame Night. What PURPLE and RAINBOW fans will embrace enthusiastically is the fact that Blackmore has found his way to the electric guitar once again.

The compositions are also much more forceful and stepping closer to previous Rock refinements in the Blackmore catalog. What makes this disc the best of the three is the absolutely brilliant symmetry between the written and the performed. Anyone could take the sheet music to these songs and make a brilliant record, they truly are composed that well, but no one could have performed this material at the level of Blackmore and Night.

"Written in the Stars" sets a more direct and powerful tone than you would expect from Renaissance music but has an absolutely incurable infectiousness. You feel like you are tripping through two places in time at once with nary a care in the world.
On paper it looked, to me, to be an incredibly strange choice but Blackmore's arrangement of Bob Dylan's "The times they are a Changing" is just outstanding. Candice sounds absolutely beautiful here as well.

"I still Remember" floods back to the style of the first two records with conservative flourishes of electric guitar. There are passages that will seem very familiar to RAINBOW fans but you must listen close.

"Fires at Midnight" borrows from several classical themes and is an absolutely haunting track, the most moving piece to be associated with BLACKMORE'S NIGHT thus far. At better than seven and a half minutes you could easily fill an evening replaying this track and never become tired of hearing it. By the time that the band begins its gallop, about three minutes in, you realize that your years of air guitar have evolved into mock swordplay by this truly transportive song.

When Ritchie Blackmore left DEEP PURPLE for the first time in the mid seventies this was the vision that he had held for his solo group, twenty-five years later that vision has been fully realized and one can only hope that nothing, not RAINBOW or DEEP PURPLE , ever threatens to interrupt it beautiful flow of music.

Released by SPV: http://www.spv.de/

Review By David Lee
DAVID LEE WILSON
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