Deep Purple: From The Setting Sun... /...To The Rising Sun

Two nights, two cities, one heavy-riffing attack.

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Deep Purple are hardly ill-served by live albums: there were, at the last count, upwards of four dozen of the buggers, and now there are two more.

From The Setting Sun… (In Wacken) was recorded, and filmed – by nine HD cameras! – at the Wacken Open Air metal festival in Germany in 2013, in order to facilitate the band’s first-ever 3D performance on Blu-ray. Meanwhile, for …To The Rising Sun (In Tokyo), filmed at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo in April 2014, there were no fewer than 12 cameras.

They will each be available in double-CD form or in various audiovisual permutations, allowing for the full multimedia onslaught.

Of course, with the fêted Made In Japan double-LP setting standards back in 1972, Purple are past masters of the live hard-rock album genre, and so there was little chance they would disappoint here. And they don’t: the Wacken show finds them in fighting mood, eager to prove to the tattooed, leather-clad hordes that age hasn’t withered them. Tokyo provides a more hushed, reverent audience and better acoustics.

Even a first-time listener to the band could tell both are blazing fireballs of speed-rocking glory. Ritchie who?

Paul Lester
Paul Lester

Paul Lester is the editor of Record Collector. He began freelancing for Melody Maker in the late 80s, and was later made Features Editor. He was a member of the team that launched Uncut Magazine, where he became Deputy Editor. In 2006 he went freelance again and has written for The Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Telegraph, Classic Rock, Q and the Jewish Chronicle. He has also written books on Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Bjork, The Verve, Gang Of Four, Wire, Lady Gaga, Robbie Williams, the Spice Girls, and Pink.