Deep Text 2022

= 1 is the twenty-third studio album by English rock band Deep Purple, released on 19 July 2024 by earMUSIC/Edel AG. It is their first album with guitarist Simon McBride, who replaced Steve Morse in 2022. It is also the band's fifth collaboration with producer Bob Ezrin, who has produced every Deep Purple album since 2013's Now What?!. The album has been described as having a loose concept around "(symbolising) the idea that in a world growing ever more complex, everything eventually simplifies down to a single, unified essence. Everything equals one". Music writer John Aizlewood described singer Ian Gillan's voice as "richer than it’s sounded in years".

Bookended as it is by Russell Mael's wordless chorale vocals that help kick off the opening "Intro" and which recur in the soothing but strange conclusion to the final song, "Likeable," not to mention similar moments throughout the album, it's almost too easy to summarize Exotic Creatures of the Deep as Sparks' most involved tribute to the Beach Boys, late-'60s version. But as with nearly everything the band's ever done, one can't sum up an album quite as simply as that, and Exotic Creatures, if not as completely explosive as Hello Young Lovers at its heights, finds the rude creative health of the Maels still firing on all cylinders.