THE BOOK OF TALIESYN

For me this is the greatest musical achievement of Deep Purple along with their "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" recordings. A-side opener "Listen, Learn, Read On" is a very good psychedelic song with a chaotic and hazy feeling, playing with classic myths and hippie mysticism. "Wring That Neck" blows a quite basic bluesy jam, but I love the sound band managed to create for this LP, so it's a pleasant track to listen though. "Kentucky woman" is a bit boring filler, and the following medley "Exposition / We Can Work It Out" does not completely gain the potential of the arrangement's prospects. But the B-side of the LP is then almost pure gold; "Shield" has a very interesting feeling in it, with lot of percussion, raw keyboard sounds and great melodies included. Then "Anthem" is for me the best song this band has ever recorded. It has influences of ancient English music, the composition is witty (and very beautiful) and it has even mellotrons in it. The final track on the original LP is "River Deep, Mountain High" which has a grand intro resembling the start of Richard Struss's "Also Spracht Zarathustra" opening. I loaned the re-mastered CD of this album from library, in order to get hear the bonus tracks, and I recall they were decent but not essential. There's also a silly anecdote about this album; I got my copy from a flea market, and it was an American vinyl press of the album. "Wring That Neck" goes here with a name of "The Hard Road", and the length of the song "Shield" is indicated as 6:66.