Blackmore’s Night – Fires at Midnight – 2001

Fires at Midnight is the third album by Blackmore’s Night. After various journeys back and forth in Deep Purple, this is now the legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s abode. But regardless of how much one associates him with the music he delivered in Deep Purple and Rainbow, Blackmore’s Night is something entirely different. It’s much more traditional rock with quite substantial influences from folk music. I must say it’s hard not to fall in love with this when you first hear it. It’s sparsely instrumented and often acoustic, although this is not the case all the time.

If you close your eyes and let your imagination flow, you can almost see a medieval court in front of you; the scales and instrumentation evoke this imagery. Candice Night’s enchanting and pure voice, together with the lyrics mentioning magic and kings and other fitting elements, contribute to this atmosphere. The whole production of Fires at Midnight is incredibly gracefully beautiful and very pleasant to relax to. What slightly lowers the rating is the songs that stray a bit further from folk music than the majority of the material. They seem somewhat mediocre in this context, although one can easily overlook this in a larger context.