RITCHIE BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW

After quitting Deep Purple, tired of the musical direction under the Coverdale/Hughes leadership, rooted in funky influences, after recording the bad "Stormbringer", Ritchie Blackmore formed a brand new band called Rainbow, determined to keep on writing heavy sounding material. The band's debut album was released in 1975 called "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow". The band sound is similar to the heavier side of Deep Purple Mark III in the "Burn" days, however the guitars are much much more relevant here than the keyboards parts. There are several prog influences on this work especially the mellotron-driven "Catch the Rainbow", very similar to Hendrix's "Little Wing" for its harmonic progression and guitar arrangement. Great part of the tracklist is made up of what later on would have become truly classic songs from this band, especially in the live context, where the lenght of every number was destined to be doubled or even tripled, giving space to a lot of improvisation. I'm referring to "Man on the silver mountain" "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves" and "Still I'm Sad", the last one presented here in a brilliant instrumental version. The album atmosphere in certain tracks like "Catch the rainbow" and "Temple Of The King" and "Still I'm Sad" is stunning, soundind ancient, medievalesque, yet surreal and dreamy. Impressive. What I consider two big let downs for the album are "Snake Charmer" and "If You Don't Like Rock N Roll", this last one reminds me of what ELP did on "Tarkus" with the awful "Are you ready Eddy": an useless basic rock n roll number, out of context.

3,75 stars.