Blackmore's Night - A Knight in York (DVD)

Blackmore's Night is the medieval folk rock band formed by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and his singer wife, Candice Night. Playing folk rock and taking medieval influences such as stage outfits as well as traditional songs, the band blend these with an electric guitar based rock sound which gives the bands quite a distinct sound. Ritchie Blackmore plays the electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, mandola, and hurdy gurdy, while Candice Night is equally versatile, performing the vocals as well as plaing pennywhistles, tambourine, and Renaissance woodwind instruments. Along with the rest of the band they play Renaissance fairs in the US and also do their own tours. They encourage the audience to dress in Medieval costumes and on their last UK tour the first few rows of the venues were reserved for people in costume - no custume meant sitting further back. This DVD release was filmed on that last UK tour - at the show in York on 30th Spetember 2011.

The DVD opens with a few shots of the historic city of York before getting down to business - the concert itself. It's been very well filmed with multiple cameras, so picture quality is high and the editing is very well done - with some live DVDs there are way too many changes of angles etc as though the director was trying to show off, but here it's been kept fairly simple so as not to distract away from the show itself.

It's a great show - having watched it then I'll definitely be booking a ticket to go and see them next time they tour. There is more of a rock element to the music than I'd expected, not having listened to the band before - other medieval bands I've heard tend to be more traditional and with much less of a rock influence, so this was a surprise, but a good one. The rock and folk/Renaissance influences worked really well together, and the musicianship was as you'd expect, superb.

There are no extras apart from 2 minutes of footage of the historic parts of York.

A great DVD for fans of folk rock in general and Blackmore's Night in particular.

"A Knight in York" will be released in the UK on 2nd July 2012


Track listing:

1. Locked within the crystal ball
2. Gilded cage
3. The circle
4. Journeyman
5. World of stone
6. The peasants promise
7. Toast to tomorrow
8. Fires at Midnight
9. Barbara Allen
10. Darkness
11. Dance of the darkness
12. Dandelion wine
13. All the fun of the fayre
14. First of May