After spending most of 2012 working on a new album, Deep Purple returned to live action with a series of shows in Russia at the end of last month.
The week-long trek was the band’s first live shows since February, following which the group went to Nashville to record with producer Bob Ezrin.
Purple are considering an early 2013 release for the untitled project, their first studio album since 2005’s “Rapture Of The Deep.”
While in Russia, frontman Ian Gillan was interviewed for Russian TV.
The singer discussed a variety of current, mostly politically-based topics, including the economics of the EU, and freedom of speech issues both in Russia and Gillan’s native UK.
On the subject of the jailed Russian band, Pussy Riot, Gillan replied, “Even worse, it’s happening in my country. We used to have freedom of speech; we used to be able to speak freely in England. It’s not possible anymore. You can’t talk about sex, you can’t talk about religion, you can’t talk about race, you can’t talk about archetypical images...there are laws against it.”
Deep Purple are currently on a full European tour with dates scheduled into early December.
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