Blackmore's Night - Winter Carols
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Free Music Notes for Winter Carols
Free Music Review: A Christmas album according to Ritchie Blackmore. Excellent stuff!
Hit: 5 Stars
What can I say, Winter Carols is a marvellous Christmas album. I own it for 2 weeks now and enjoy it more and more. Needless to say that the music is just beautiful ...as everything Ritchie Blackmore puts his finger in. Put the record on and feel the magnificent atmosphere of a Christmas Eve. Imagine yourself cosily sitting by a crackling fireplace, a Christmas tree is also near; you're watching through the window how snow is falling, at the dancing snowflakes in the air... You feel like an innocent child again. And time is magically standing still...
And now I'll try to describe Winter Carols track-by-track. Let me first make a note that I don't know any traditional song from the album except We Wish You A Merry Christmas so to me a comparison with originals is senseless and I take all the traditionals just as they are on Winter Carols.
-Hark The Herald Angels Sing/Come All Ye Faithful
The cd starts a bit pompous in my opinion but that's ok because it's supposed to be a hymn. The acoustic parts are very inviting. Yes Ritchie plays on his strat here and even with a solo, amazing as always. The speeded up second part of the track is great, too.
-I Saw Three Ships
Nice joyous song, immediately puts a jolly smile on my face. The smart guitar touch in the end makes the smile really wide.
-Winter (Basse Dance)
The only instrumental here, originally written for the album. Ritchie's music fits the title perfectly. How to describe it? As for any instrumental played by Blackmore there is one way: take a listen to this brilliant piece of music and create your own pictures in your mind.
-Ding Dong Merrily On High
The whole song is so attractive, its best moments are "Gloria" lines, they are sung gorgeous. The track has something from the baroque style sounding. One of the absolute highlights of the album.
-Ma-O-Tzur
A soft song with a verse sung on Hebrew with Candice's bewitching vocals.
-Good King Weinceslas
Make a captivating journey through the track. Hear how it starts from percussion and Candice's mysteriously singing voice and then how the song is developing by adding new instruments, becoming more and more intense until the culmination and finally fading with Candice singing using unusual for our ears scales again. Another highlight.
-Lord Of The Dance/Simple Gifts
Cheerful and inviting to dance song, I bet your heels will start tapping!
-We Three Kings
It's a mystical song which haunts you. All you need is to dissolve in the flow of the music and follow it, and you'll be transported to another dimention.
-Wish You Were Here
Personally I wonder why it has landed up on a Christmas album, it looks kind of out of place here. But I love the song and I like how Ritchie and Candice treat this beautiful ballad with lovely singing and delicious guitar parts. The major difference from the Shadow Of The Moon version that I can hear is a new drum line added to the mix and probably some backing vocals, everything else is kept the same.
-Emmanuel
And one more mysterious acoustic track. Calm and relaxing, with a touching flute solo, it will bring you warmth of a brightening fireplace.
-Christmas Eve
Written by Ritchie and Candice, this bright and sparkling song brings a fountain of positive emotions, a true festive feeling and makes you feel like a happy child again.
-We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Very uplifting ending of the album, it keeps that jolly childish feeling of the previous track. Harmony vocals by Sisters Of The Moon sound so astonishing here. This song deserves to be longer.
Overall impression - it's a great album for the Christmas time. Compliments to Candice, her singing is wonderful.
Talking about the best songs, it's hard to decide, because there are no weak tracks. By now among my most favourites are Ding Dong Merrily On High, Good King Weinceslas, We Three Kings, We Wish You A Merry Christmas and the instrumental followed by Christmas Eve and the other songs.
Free Music Review: A HOLIDAY GIFT TO MUSIC LOVER S THE WHOLE WORLD 'ROUND.....
Hit: 5 Stars
What do you get when you combine a legendary rock guitarist, an angel-voiced singer, a few more amazingly-gifted musicians; throw in a hurdy-gurdy, a pennywhistle and a Fender guitar; and then let them weave their musical magic into an unequalled holiday CD? Why, it's "Winter Carols", by Blackmore's Night, by Jove!
This hardy band of medieval minstrels, led by Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Rainbow fame, along with his lovely and talented partner, Candice Night, have once again applied their Medieval- and Renaissance-inspired rock talents to some well-known, as well as some lesser-known holiday classics, and have crafted a wonderful, extremely listenable holiday CD, that would only leave the most incorrigible Scrooge among us unmoved.
"Winter Carols" has twelve tracks, with many favorites of Yuletides past, including "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", "Good King Wenceslas", "Emmanuel", and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". These are not pale, watered-down elevator music renditions of songs we've all heard many times... these are heady, mirthful, musically- and lyrically-beautiful tunes that have received the inimitable Blackmore's Night hallmark. "We Three Kings" and "Ding Dong Merrily on High" round out the classics that have benefitted from BN's magical embellishments. If you are like me, these may spirit you away to a far-away time and place!
Included are two songs perhaps more well-known to aficionados of British and Celtic music , "Lord of the Dance/ Simple Gifts" and "I Saw Three Ships". These magically-rendered pieces, along with "Ma-O-Tzur", a simple yet wondrous Hanukkah tune, lend an indescribable world music feel to this beautiful holiday CD. Also included is a pensive and melodic BN original guitar instrumental entitled "Winter (Basse Dance)", which gave me wonderful visions of merry-makers dancing before a Yule log burning in the fireplace of a resplendently-decked royal hall of by-gone days. A previously-released BN track, "Wish You Were Here", graces the CD too; its melancholy yet beautiful sentiments go right to the hearts of those among us who will not have a loved one by our side this year, for whatever reason. Another BN re-release, "Christmas Eve", is an upbeat and bright song, guaranteed to raise your spirits.
If you are already a fan of BN, shame on you if you don't have this CD by now! If you are not yet a fan of BN, you will be before you finish listening to this CD. Ritchie, Candice, and their friends in BN are musicians who lovingly put every ounce of talent and skill at their disposal into their songs, somehow effortlessly, unselfishly, and untiringly...that, to me, is the magic of Blackmore's Night. They have poured that magic yet again into "Winter Carols", and in the spirit of the holidays, I highly recommend this phenomenal CD to you.
Free Music Review: Journey to a Starlit Wnter's Night in the Days of Olde...
Hit: 5 Stars
This album has it all - dazzling guitar playing, lush orchestrations and beautiful singing, all performed in a style truly reverent to to the olde tyme feeling that these traditional songs deserve. I am not a huge fan of most present day Christmas albums precisely for this reason - too often the traditional feeling is lost by adding cheesy synthesizers, programmed drum machines and other such modern-day hokum. Blackmore's Night has wisely avoided this trap and has resultingly created a splendid album that will mentally transport the listener to a starlit, snow-covered countryside on a cold Winter's eve. I also like the fact that Blackmore has chosen several Christmas songs that are not widely known, such as "Ma-O-Tzur", "I Saw Three Ships", "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and "Lord of the Dance/Simple Gifts", so that we are not being barraged by the same songs being performed by all the other artists who are performing Christmas songs out there. While every Blackmore's Night CD is of uniformly high quality, there are always 2 or 3 songs on each album which jump out as instant classics. Winter Carols is no exception. "I Saw Three Ships" and "Lord of the Dance/Simple Gifts" not only rank right up there with the best Blackmore's Night songs, but are rapidly becoming two of my all-time favorite Christmas songs. That is how excellent they are. Both have such infectious, catchy melodies that they will swim around in your head for hours. I can just see minstrels dancing around the medieval courtyard every time I listen to them. "Emmanuel" is another standout, highlighted by Blackmore's fluid guitar playing and, during the last half of the song, droning cellos which will leave you begging for more. You can just feel the chill in the air as you listen to "Winter", accented by Blackmore at his acoustic best and powerful strings. A special commendation must be given to the Sisters of the Moon - their backup vocals in "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" are sung in such a high range that it truly does bring to mind a choir of heavenly angels. "Christmas Eve" (a Blackmore's Night original?) with its church bells, horns and sleigh bells, is as good a modern day carol as I have heard. What more can I say? Throw a few logs on the fire, get a glass of your favorite brew, and take a journey to the days of olde on a starlit, snow-covered rural winter's night...Free Music Review: A white Christmas? Or deep purple?
Hit: 5 Stars
Neither, actually, but the cover shows a German townscape covered in snow (obviously from the days before global warming) while Ritchie Blackmore, the main musician here (he plays guitar, mandola, nyckelharpa, hurdy gurdy and various percussion), made his name originally with heavy rockers Deep Purple. The music here is very different from Ritchie's earlier music with Deep Purple and (later) Rainbow. I think it is essentially a folk album, rooted in the medieval era while sounding contempory, yet I found it in the mainstream pop-rock section of my local store. I also learned that the album made the top 10 of the American Billboard new age chart. So classify it however you want, but this is Christmas music of the highest quality. Candice Night (a wonderful singer) provides all the lead vocals and some of the harmonies and also plays shawns, pennywhistle and recorder. Producer Pat Regan plays all the keyboards.
The song selection is very British, including as it does I saw three ships, Ding dong merrily on high, Good King Wenceslas and the folk song Lord of the dance (great to see that one, even if it's not actually a Christmas song as such - it can be interpreted as one), finally closing with We wish you a merry Christmas. More familiar to American ears will be We three kings, Emmanuel and the opening medley of Hark the herald angels sing and O come all ye faithful, joined together by a great instrumental bridge.
Ritchie wrote a couple of tracks - the instrumental Winter (basse dance) and the outstanding Christmas Eve, which was actually released as a single in 2005. The other two songs are covers but they're new to me. Wish you were here (another non-Christmas song that fits in well) is the Rednex song, not the equally brilliant Barbara Mandrell song of that title with which I've long been familiar. I don't know where Ritchie found the traditional Ma-o-tzur but I'm glad he did.
I found this to be a very upbeat album and enjoyed every minute of it. I had no real idea what to expect when I bought it but I sensed that it was likely to be special and it is. I've heard plenty of Christmas albums and this, while not my favorite, is certainly among the best. And as for Blackmore's Night, I'll certainly have to investigate their music further one day.
Free Music Review: Well worth the wait!
Hit: 5 Stars
Imagine my surprise when I saw Amazon was offering this magical work some three weeks before its international release...but I'm not complaining!
Ritchie, Candice and the gang are in top form here -- far from a slapped together compilation of traditional Christmas favourites, this album has every bit of the careful attention to detail that make their works such a treat to experience. Happily, while many of the old stalwarts are included, such as We Three Kings, Hark the Herald and Emmanuel, to name a few, they have included a few of the more rarely heard holiday songs, Lord of the Dance (no relation to the musical) being a particularly rousing example.
For those few naysayers who have in the past brought Candice's vocal abilities into question, let me say this: this album will put any lingering doubters to shame. Truly a vocal tour-de-force, Candice's rendition of We Saw Three Ships is filled with such enthusiasm that it quickly becomes contagious. Her beautiful soft singing of Ma-O-Tzur, in particular, will evoke goosebumps on any who are fortunate enough to be listening. To the so-called pundits, this girl can sing!
Perhaps the only (minor) nit I have with the album is the relative scarcity of purely instrumental songs, but this being a Christmas album I suppose that's to be expected. Ritchie is at the top of his craft here, so instrumentals from this maestro are always a treat -- but then, we'd also lose out on Candice's lovely voice. So, all in all, I think they've achieved a fine balance.
I have to admit I was a bit surprised that Ritchie would have a go at a Christmas album, but then his creativity with established works in the past has been nothing short of brilliant, and it's no different here.
Now if only they'll have a concert here in the Great White North...