PURPENDICULAR

Deep Purple is one of my favorite bands. I discovered DP in the early 1990s, before Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Maybe that's why I like Deep Purple more) I would like to make my first review of their work on this site specifically for Purpendicular. Why? This album has always been special to me. I listened to it before the first Deep Purple concert in Kyiv, my hometown, in 1996. It was very exciting. I'll see my favorite band for the first time! I remember walking around town all day and listening to this album on my old cassette player over and over again. Thoughts came one after another. Is Ritchie Blackmore gone for good? How will Steve Morse play old songs in concert? Will they perform Child in Time?... The concert was wonderful, but that's another story...

This album is not just another entry in their discography. I think this is the beginning of a new stage in their creativity. Steve Morse added a new style to their music. The most important thing is that he doesn't try to play like Ritchie Blackmore. He adds his own style, and as a result the music becomes more diverse. For example, Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic, Soon Forgotten or Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming would never have been recorded by Ritchie Blackmore in this form. Perhaps they wouldn't exist at all. And with Steve Morse, bold experiments became possible. The guitar riffs of Vavoom... sound like something similar to funk and grunge, Soon Forgotten is recorded relaxed and cheeky, like musicians in a pub, Sometimes... looks like a hard version of a song by Kansas, with whom Steve Morse briefly recorded. Throughout the album there are wonderful inclusions of jazz, fragments of folk, blues and even country. And that is great! I like the development of music. This is what distinguishes the album from the previous one, The Battle Rages On, which is very good without a doubt, but too Deeppurplean)