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| Blackmore's Night - Past Times With Good Company |
  Released: 2002/2003 Label: SPV/Steamhammer Cat. No.: 095-74492 Total Time: 50:09 / 44:16 | |
Reviewed by: Karyn Hamilton, July 2003 Before you go any further, look at the Style heading above: this is FOLK ROCK. There. If that wasn't enough to make you metalheads immediately skip to the next review, then pray read on, milords and sweet ladies. Blackmore's Night is named for its two core artists, Ritchie Blackmore (better known as the guitarist from Deep Purple and Rainbow) and his partner, the angelic-voiced Candice Night. Deep Purple / Rainbow fans beware; don't pick this up without being aware just of how utterly and completely different Blackmore's Night is from Ritchie's earlier material. He has left his rocker days behind him, now concentrating on one of his totally different passions – renaissance culture – and his music has undergone a huge change. As is characteristic of folk music, Past Times With Good Company contains simple lyrics and relatively simple, light-hearted tunes. Some of these are arrangements of traditional music – the title track was apparently written in the 1600s by King Henry VIII – others are material from the band, and some are soft-reprises of songs from his past. Though the electric guitar does make scattered appearances (listen for the rearrangement of the Rainbow number "16th Century Greensleeves"), Ritchie plays mostly acoustic on this album, and has numerous other instruments credited to his name (mandolin, mandola, hurdy gurdy and renaissance drums). Candice, who bizarrely reminds me of Olivia Newton-John (in sound, not in musical style!), supplies the vocals, as well as playing the shawm, cornamuse and rauschpfeife (baroque woodwind instruments), tambourine, and pennywhistle. Also appearing are Carmine Giglio (keyboards and backing vocals), Chris Devine (a goddamn awesome violinist, also plays recorder and mandolin), Kevin Dunne (guest drums), "Robert Of Normandie" (bass, rhythm guitar and backing vocals), "Lady Rraine" (backing vocals) and "Malcolm Of Lumley" (main drums). The main attraction in this group for me lies in the fact that it is very well-done mediaeval music. If you don't like mediaeval music, this will hold no attraction for you whatsoever, but I personally very much enjoy them. The baroque instrumentation is one which definitely appeals to me; I particularly admire the violinist, whose best performance is on "Morning Star" (as a violinist myself, including orchestral strings on any album is a surefire way to make me sit up and take notice). Ritchie shows that he certainly still has the guitar skills, with numerous complex instrumental passages that are flawlessly executed. Right now I'm listening to "Minstrel Hall," which is probably the best example of this. I also enjoyed "Writing On The Wall," which borrows its theme from the famous "Moderato" in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. All in all, if I were giving this album a rating only from my personal point of view, I'd give it more stars than I have. However, as a prog/power metal reviewer, I'm aware that Past Times With Good Company doesn't fit into this genre, and has mostly been included here because of Ritchie Blackmore's history within the metal scene. Thus it scores just the two stars, not because I think it is a substandard album, but because I know most people reading this site [ProgPower Online, that is] will need to have a good listen before they even think of buying it. [Of course, now that this review has a new home at PW, it fits right in; see also Keith's review -ed.] PPO Rating: 2/10 [This review originally appeared at the ProgPower Online review site -ed.] More about Past Times With Good Company: Track Listing: Disc One: Shadow Of The Moon / Play Minstrel Play / Minstrel Hall / Past Times With Good Company / Fire At Midnight / Under A Violet Moon / Soldier Of Fortune Musicians: Contact: Website: www.blackmoresnight.com Discography
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