MADE IN JAPAN

Deep Purple's Made In Japan captures the Mark II lineup of the band on the Machine Head tour, and draws its songs mainly from that album - which is fine by me since I think that was the best that lineup had to offer. It's a decent one-stop "best of" for the In Rock-Fireball-Machine Head period - particularly with the addition of the encores in recent expanded editions - and fans of the group will delight in some of the extended soloing on offer, though if you're not bowled over by their studio albums from the period I don't think these live renditions are going to change your mind very much.