With a slight delay from the initial release date, the 35th anniversary edition of “Stormbringer” is finally on our hands! Naturally, it’s been preceded by all the previous Purple records (in fully remastered form) and all those who have purchased those reissues know by first hand that they are truly gems. The sad thing with this reissue is that we are not treated with any unreleased material from those recordings back in 1974 and so we must do with the new remixes by Glenn Hughes (it seems that it is the fate of the bassist in Purple to handle the revisited tracks).

Don’t expect from me a review of “Stormbringer”…you know most (if not all) of the songs in there. We are talking about the funk/soul period of Purple and the last participation of Blackmore until the ’84 reunion. In this double edition, of notice are the instrumental version of “High Ball Shooter” and the fully detailed and superb liner notes of the 25-page booklet. Reading about some fairly unknown incidents (like for instance about Bowie’s dancing to the rhythm of “Hold On” in the studio or Blackmore’s invitation to an African-American guy upon the Purple private…well, this guy hummed the melody of “Love Don’t Mean A Thing” to Hughes and Coverdale) has a certain value. The same applies to those well-documented incidents with Blackmore’s boredom to play the excellent (as it turned out) solo for “Hold On” thus ending up using only his thumb (!) being the predominant one. It’s only rock n roll…or should we say funk n roll?

The accompanied DVD doesn’t include any visual moments but merely a 5.1 audio mix of the record.

Highlight: Stormbringer, coming your way…at least for all the Purple fans out there!

Sakis Nikas