DEEP PURPLE

Using as cover a section of the triptych painted in oil on boards "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch of the XV century, Deep Purple published in the epilogue of the sixties the last chapter of the trilogy that marked the point and apart of their first stage, simply titled "Deep Purple" (1969).

An album that maintains that explorer and psychedelic spirit sprinkled with traces of classical music of its predecessor "The Book of Taliesyn", in themes that include African percussive elements by the hand of Ian Paice in the tribal "Chasing Shadows", Jon Lord's warm harpsichord notes on the baroque "Blind", Rod Evans' Greg Lake-esque Crimsonian singing on the delicate cover of the Scottish Donovan "Lalena", and schizoid studio tricks using reverse tapes on the brief instrumental "Fault Line"; and also shows Ritchie Blackmore very involved in the composition with a rich display of riffs and distorted guitar solos interspersed with Lord's hammonds, especially in the funky "The Painter", in the bluesy "Why Didn't Rosemary? " (with an alternative thematic approach to Roman Polasky's creepy film "The Rosemary's Baby"), and in the thick, lingering cadence of the narcotized "The Bird Has Flown".

And if there is a song that could summarize the first stage of the band, that would be the mini-suite "April": the interest in experimental atmospheres in the medieval and beautiful introduction of church organs and acoustic guitars, Lord's persistent concern for incorporating classical components with the arrangement of violins in between, and the incipient hard rock still to take off that appeared in the final stretch of the long track.

Given the scarce commercial repercussion of the album and convinced that the band would not have much more future in the cloudy paths of psychedelia and sixties sonorities, Blackmore and Lord then incorporated Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, dispensing with Rod Evans and Nick Simper in the search of hardening their sound, more in accordance with the powerful style piloted by the overwhelming Led Zeppelin. Thus ended the appreciable formative stage of Deep Purple.

3.5/4 stars

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