About the vinyl edition

To mark the 40th anniversary of the recording, a new edition single  album on vinyl has been prepared. Gemini Suite Live has never been  issued on vinyl before. As you might imagine, a lot of effort has gone  into the release. As the label put it: 'To us, a vinyl release should  be special and offer both the collector and vinyl fan something  unique. The idea of just scaling up a CD to LP size is just so dull.  We want the vinyl edition to be much more interesting and to take  advantage of the extra size and space the format offers'. So the  single album comes in a smart single sleeve, with the record itself  housed in a full colour inner bag, which has notes, rare photographs  and memorabilia on it. It's a 180gms pressing done in Germany. The  finished package is shrinkwrapped. The first 1,500 copies only are on  coloured wax for collectors.

About the music

The Gemini Suite was the second full length work involving rock  musicians and an orchestra written by Deep Purple’s keyboard player  Jon Lord. It followed Deep Purple's highly successful Concerto For  Group & Orchestra, first performed in 1969 and now (following a  revival by the group in 1999) being staged by different players and  orchestras all round the world. Gemini Suite was based around the individual musical characters of the  members of Deep Purple, with a solo movement for each. The work was  performed for the first time in 1970, but the rest of the group,  worried that such ventures would give rock audiences the wrong  impression, declined to repeat the experiment. When Lord later made a  studio recording of the piece, two of the group opted out, making this  a unique recording of the work in it’s original incarnation. With some  stunning performances and imaginative writing, it's an important cross- over work as well as being a fascinating early example of the  orchestral rock movement. The recording was lost for many years but rescued and released by RPM  and then transferred to Purple Records.

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Deep Purple 'The Gemini Suite - Live' can be ordered from the dpas online store.