BartVanHemelen said:

Not a word about this release in Rolling Stone's 13 July 2017 issue. (Nor in their 29 June 2017 issue.)

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Not a peep about it in Mojo's August 2017 issue.

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Seriously, didn't Warners send this out for review? Are we going to get a bunch of them only in a couple of weeks or so?

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This is really, really odd.

[Edited 7/2/17 6:34am]

They review only what has been sent to them, and the more money they are given by the record company, the better publicity they make.

As WB gave nothing to the specialized press, there is zero coverage and exposition.

PR Deluxe debuted on the Billboard 200 at #4, pretty darn good if you ask me....

I made these screenshots today using my iPhone:

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Source: https://www.pinterest.com...nd/prince/

[Edited 7/4/17 21:56pm]

Expanded edition of ‘Purple Rain’ is mind-blowing yet flawed

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/06/30/expanded-edition-purple-rain/

The remaster itself was engineered by Josh Welton under the supervision of Prince in 2015, and while it sounds louder and a bit brighter, it’s so compressed that it loses dynamic range. The vinyl pressing, when compared to the prior 2009 reissue or even the 1984 original, shows no real discernible improvement. The deluxe two-CD set is still worth getting, though, if only for the remarkable second disc, a full 80 minutes of previously unreleased material from the “Purple Rain” era. Highlights are the stunning full 12-minute take on “Computer Blue,” searing funk workouts like the 11-minute “Dance Electric,” “Love and Sex” and “Possessed,” and the wonderfully salacious “We Can Fuck.” The shimmering instrumental “Father’s Song,” based around a piano melody that recurs throughout the film, is chill-inducing. There are a couple throwaways (“Velvet Kitty Cat” and “Katrina’s Paper Dolls”) whose inclusion is questionable given the amount of better material available and still unreleased, but by and large the disc is a revelation.

Props to the Billboard folks for:

1 - Having a missing sleeve image
2 - Reference the original PR issue




Has there some kind of curse cast upon this release?

206Michelle said:

PR Deluxe debuted on the Billboard 200 at #4, pretty darn good if you ask me....

I made these screenshots today using my iPhone:

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Source: https://www.pinterest.com...nd/prince/

[Edited 7/4/17 21:56pm]

Impressive given how lousy the publicity was and how many copies of PR that were sold just last year. If being in the top 2 means you have to have the musical geniuis of DJ Khaled or Imagine Dragons, then perhaps it is better not being on top these days .

THis been posted?

http://www.thecurrent.org...k-by-track

I honestly can't get over the amount of people (in the comments) complaining about the lack of "extended" versions of Darling Nikki and The Beautiful Ones over the multiple entire tracks that are missing from this. Do that many people really think the unedited versions are superior? Should Purple Rain have that extra verse as well?

[Edited 7/5/17 23:02pm]

Review by SuperDeluxeEdition: http://www.superdeluxeedi...xe-review/ .

By The Second Disc: https://theseconddisc.com...d-edition/

By The Boombox: http://theboombox.com/a-b...d-edition/

By De Volkskrant (in Dutch); includes an interview with Susan Rogers: http://www.volkskrant.nl/...~a4502208/

Track-by-track guide by City Pages: http://www.citypages.com/.../430259193

Review by The Lowdown Under: http://thelowdownunder.co...-19842017/

By Allan Raible for ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Ent...d=48337582

(Would be nice if the first post in this thread were to contain an updated dlist of all the reviews linked, to have an overview and to avoid duplication.)

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[Edited 7/7/17 2:24am]

Nice one Bart.

BartVanHemelen said:

Review by SuperDeluxeEdition: http://www.superdeluxeedi...xe-review/ .

By The Second Disc: https://theseconddisc.com...d-edition/

By The Boombox: http://theboombox.com/a-b...d-edition/

By De Volkskrant (in Dutch); includes an interview with Susan Rogers: http://www.volkskrant.nl/...~a4502208/

Track-by-track guide by City Pages: http://www.citypages.com/.../430259193

Review by The Lowdown Under: http://thelowdownunder.co...-19842017/

By Allan Raible for ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Ent...d=48337582

(Would be nice if the first post in this thread were to contain an updated dlist of all the reviews linked, to have an overview and to avoid duplication.)

.

[Edited 7/7/17 2:24am]

It seems that when if finally does get some attention by the press, it has universally been positve.

I like to think of this PR release starting with 10000 points, then slowly deducting points as the mistakes and eff-ups start to stack up - I think it's still in the 900s even with all the problems raised though! the good outweighs the bad.

Review (in Dutch) by Belgian newspaper De Morgen: https://www.demorgen.be/m...-ba237265/

A 3 pages long, well-balanced review has been published on popmatters : http://www.popmatters.com...n-reissue/

bonatoc said:

A 3 pages long, well-balanced review has been published on popmatters : http://www.popmatters.com...n-reissue/

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See "Reply #58 posted 07/02/17 9:51pm": http://prince.org/msg/7/4...sg_9976674

BartVanHemelen said:

bonatoc said:

A 3 pages long, well-balanced review has been published on popmatters : http://www.popmatters.com...n-reissue/

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See "Reply #58 posted 07/02/17 9:51pm": http://prince.org/msg/7/4...sg_9976674

Yeah, well they'd better read it more than once!

Review (in Dutch) in Dutch newspaper NRC: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws...r-a1564043

Review by news.com.au: http://www.news.com.au/en...28bd09737b

Review (in German) by Classic Rock (Germany): http://classicrock.net/re...d-edition/

Review by Beat (beat.media): https://beat.media/prince...ed-edition

Review by Albumism: http://www.albumism.com/r...ed-edition

2freaky4church1 said:

WE need a vault box. About ten cds, not greedy.

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Hahaha

10 CD's per volume, yes.

Many volumes.

Take my money and release it!

starkitty said:

Review coming in the September issue of Uncut:

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In this month’s new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday in the UK, we go looking for two of the most fabled repositories of unreleased music. One proves easy to access – at least partially – as Stephen Deusner reviews the deluxe edition of Purple Rain, and the first cache of lost songs from the presumably vast Prince archive. “For decades Prince’s vaults have been rock’n’roll’s very own El Dorado, a mythical place filled with untold treasures,” writes Stephen. “During his life he added to it every day but guarded the contents closely… It’s a bitter irony that it took his tragic death in April 2016 for that vault to be opened.”

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Note that there does not seem to be a major article about this, though I think Uncut does sometimes write extensive reviews.

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Bonus:

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Finally, we hear of a particularly obsessive pursuit of Sly Stone. There’s another man whose vaults might hold the odd surprise or two…

Review by The Line of Best Fit: https://www.thelineofbest...xe-edition

By TeamRock.com: http://teamrock.com/revie...bum-review

By Under The Radar: http://www.undertheradarm...ed_edition

By Spill Magazine: http://spillmagazine.com/...d-edition/ (only 3.5/5!)

By Nashville Scene: http://www.nashvillescene...in-reissue

[Edited 7/19/17 7:50am]

gandorb said:

Metastatic finally weighed in with a score of 100.

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Incredible. Gets the name of the site wrong and doesn't bother linking to it.

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http://www.metacritic.com...revolution

BartVanHemelen said:

Dutch magazine Oor has a six page article (though 2.5 of those are big pictures) on the album; you can see the first two pages here: https://oor.nl/magazine/ Written by Tom Engelshoven, one of the two authors of the first Dutch book about Prince, the article is basically a long interview with Susan Rogers.



There's also a review of the album on page 99 which mainly focuses on the vault tracks. The end result is positive, though the review does point out that the package as a whole is rather cheap and somewhat disappointing.

Review by AllMusic: http://www.allmusic.com/a...0004713675

Review by The Way That He Sings: http://twths.org/album-re...e-reissue/

Review by HeraldScotland: http://www.heraldscotland...ner_Bros_/

[Edited 7/24/17 5:05am]

Are there any other deluxe editions planned?

goosepumble said:

Are there any other deluxe editions planned?

That's the question on everyone's mind this summer. I would love more.

Review in issue31 of Classic Pop; they name it "Best Reissue" (for August 2017). An excerpt of the (full-page) review:

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a plethora of delights.

The Dance Electric is 11 minutes of crisp shimmerfunk.

Love And Sex opens with a climactic orgiastic shriek, ahead of a fi ve-minute cavalcade of Linn drum slap-beats and woozy synths, over which Prince gets his freak on.

Computer Blue (Hallway Speech Version) is the full 12-minute version of Purple Rain’s four-minute fourth track, a wild extrapolation of the original’s compact design.

Electric Intercourse (Studio Version) was bumped from the original after Prince dreamed up The Beautiful Ones, but it’s every bit as grand as the betterknown ballad that became Purple Rain’s third track.

Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden anticipates the heady string-drenched fantasias Prince would visit on 1985’s Around The World In A Day and features a duet between his nibs and Lisa Coleman.

Possessed sounds like a madly sped-up Kraftwerk, with plucked harp strings on top, Wonderful Ass is a two-chord synth-funk vamp, albeit a wildly inventive one, Velvet Kitty Cat is the sort of tinny machine beat melody that the excellent Felix Da Housecat, to name but one, built a career on.

Finally, there’s We Can Fuck, a more explicit take on the George Clinton duet from Graffiti Bridge, and Father’s Song, a worked-up version of the 90-second snippet from the Purple Rain movie.

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BartVanHemelen said:

By TeamRock.com: http://teamrock.com/revie...bum-review

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I hadn't noticed this is the website for Classic Rock magazine, and this review is also available in theur August 2017 (no. 239) issue.