For just under a quarter of a century, Deep Purple/Rainbow guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has been part of the music scene with his wife Candice Night in medieval garb. By devoting himself to live hard rock in recent years with a newly formed Rainbow lineup, the musical pressure on Blackmore's Night has been lessened. This also seems to have had an effect on their new album "Nature's Light". Candice Night at least seems very deeply relaxed - and definitely takes a look beyond the horizon of medieval pop ..
eclipsed: When you approach a new album, is there a route to take beforehand?
Candice Night: We believe in letting the music guide us. Ritchie has tapes upon tapes of ideas when he's looking for inspiration. But he tends to write from a fresh perspective when it's time to go into the studio. If he's doing a more fast track, the next song will then be an instrumental or a ballad, something completely different from what we were working on. So when we create something, there's a lot of variety, and the music takes us down different paths.
eclipsed: Honestly, some of Blackmore's Night's song material from the past I personally can't relate to that much. However, there are quite a few songs that touch me emotionally, e.g. "Writing On The Wall", "Shadow Of The Moon", "The Storm" or "Fires At Midnight". But in my opinion your sound contains too much shallow pop. Can you deal with this criticism or do you completely contradict me?
Night: Sometimes you need a song to sing along to in order to feel good, and especially in these difficult times, any music that brings about positivity is okay with me. We have a lot of variety on our albums. There are songs for all types of listeners. Some people love them all. Others only like some of them
eclipsed: There are three tracks on the new album that impress me. First of all there are the two instrumentals - and then there is the last track which reminds me of my favourite BN songs so far
Night: The instrumental "Darker Shade Of Black" was originally written by Ritchie for an earlier CD, but the record company we had didn't do a good job promoting it, so he felt it wasn't really being heard and deserved a re-release so people could enjoy it on this record. He was inspired by the idea behind one of his favorite songs, "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" - this is the antithesis of that classic, which is just "Darker Shade Of Black". "The Last Musketeer" is based on an idea Ritchie derived from his experiences with one of his favorite bands he was in before Deep Purple. He has fond memories of the Three Musketeers: They had a lot of fun back then! That was the time when fame didn't cause pressure and stress. The other two guys from the band are now dead, one was a very good friend of Ritchie's, Jimmy "Tornado" Evans, who passed away in 2018. So Ritchie essentially sees himself as the last Musketeer. "Second Element," on the other hand, is a song that was originally on Sarah Brightman's album Dive. I fell in love with it immediately and have wanted to do it for a long time. The concept behind it about the magic of water and understanding that water is the source of all life was gorgeous. So we interpreted it in our own way.
