It's a bit of a weak album concept, but I am glad to hear the songs in a better quality nonetheless. Given the concept and what's here, I wish they'd also included Prince's versions of Desire and Mutiny. I love Prince's version of Desire.

goosepumble said:

It's a bit of a weak album concept, but I am glad to hear the songs in a better quality nonetheless. Given the concept and what's here, I wish they'd also included Prince's versions of Desire and Mutiny. I love Prince's version of Desire.

I heard it played officaly!

Kares said:

olb99 said:

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I just listened to the Scandalous Sex Suite again. It's incredible, indeed.

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About that guitar solo on "The Rapture": it's not the same recording as the guitar track on "Dear Michaelangelo", is it? Maybe I'm tired/deaf. He's definitely playing something similar, hitting the same notes, but it doesn't sound like the same solo (i.e. "Dear Michaelangelo" was an inspiration, but he didn't sample the track).

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I just want to say, before the org police comes and clears all my offtopic ramblings that I appreciate your avatar - Aura is such an amazing and underrated album!

Miles' last masterpiece.

Kares said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

bonnie184 said:

I know people have pointed out some of the vocals being of low quality (at least in "100 MPH"), but do the drums in "Manic Monday" sound muddy to anyone else? It's really noticeable in the intro, but every fill and snare roll throughout sounds muddy

BartVanHemelen said:

Review in Slate: https://slate.com/culture...s-2-u.html

From the article..

[T]he only real difference is that Prince is singing them. In some ways this is welcome—after all, a vaguely bored-sounding Prince is still a far better singer than Jill Jones—but it certainly doesn’t do anything to diminish the long-standing impression that Prince viewed certain of his female protégés as little more than glorified karaoke singers.

That's just cold and wrong on too many levels. He gave these people near-complete songs because that was what was in his head. Some people get by on piano and guitar. The man heard whole songs and possessed the ability to make them real within hours. Should he have stopped at guitar and piano sketches so others could fill in the blanks? I suppose its fashionable today, to paint the women in his life back then as victims. However, the writer doesn't acknowledge the record deals he secured for all the people in his orbit. He didn't have to do any of it for any of them.

FUNKNROLL said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Review in Slate: https://slate.com/culture...s-2-u.html

From the article..

[T]he only real difference is that Prince is singing them. In some ways this is welcome—after all, a vaguely bored-sounding Prince is still a far better singer than Jill Jones—but it certainly doesn’t do anything to diminish the long-standing impression that Prince viewed certain of his female protégés as little more than glorified karaoke singers.

That's just cold and wrong on too many levels. He gave these people near-complete songs because that was what was in his head. Some people get by on piano and guitar. The man heard whole songs and possessed the ability to make them real within hours. Should he have stopped at guitar and piano sketches so others could fill in the blanks? I suppose its fashionable today, to paint the women in his life back then as victims. However, the writer doesn't acknowledge the record deals he secured for all the people in his orbit. He didn't have to do any of it for any of them.

That part rubbed me the wrong way as well, and not just for the reasons you mention. How anyone could come across with the impression that "Baby, You're a Trip" of all songs features Prince sounding vaguely bored is completely beyond me.

TakEpri said:

Kares said:

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I see.
Well, that is just carelessness. There's no reason for such a mess, regardless of the source tape. If they've received the Purple Rain album remaster in 24/96 from Prince, then they could've just used that resolution for discs 2 and 3 too, for the sake of simplicity.

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Thanks for the info, so the situation is similar in hdtracks but only Father's Song is different. This is difficult to understand but I can hardly believe it is just a carelessness...

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What else would it be? There's no reason to put songs of an album out in different resolutions, regardless of the quality or the format of the analog source.
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When an entire album is of poor quality (such as 'official bootleg' releases or stuff sourced from cassettes), I see no point in putting those out in 24bit/192kHz as it will just result in bigger files unnecessarily, 24bit/48kHz will be good enough, but using different resolution for different songs on the same album just shows carelessness.

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bonnie184 said:

love2thenines2003 said:

....so this initial version is not only WDC + the bass...but more a complex mix ! Pleaz....release it !

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So that will be the un-original mix..

Neversin said:

udo said:

.

Sure, but then at least we have undeniably pointed out the flaws in his work, pointed out the directions that the work should be going and pointed out the speed at which things should be going.

This fixes the need for him to go through 'all over the org' and gives him the info in a condensed way.

It can all be done in 30 minutes or less as questions are an NDA-issue, so it will be a one way statement mostly.

Read Bart's update from an interview in "De Morgen" with Howe and you'll see that any useful info from people who followed and researched Prince and his music will be consciously neglected...
I won't waste my time trying to talk sense into these simpletons...
These are the kind of people handling Prince's music folks...
The only mildly decent idea from them is the most obvious one that even a 5 year old could come up with: a new NPGMC like site...

https://prince.org/msg/7/...?&pg=2

Neversin.

Given the NDA's he signed I get that discussions with fans for input could be in breach of that, but not doing anything or not let them know what people like you know about his recordings would be a missed oportunity to maybe steer thing in the right direction.

Honestly I don't thnk Prince would have liked that Mr. Spotify Troy Carter (a service he famously didn't like) and WB (we all know how he thought about them) yes-man Michael Howe are in charge of handling his recordings.

All in all, don;t give up or else the next thing you know we'll be getting are posthumous Justin Timberlake collaborations or Questlove remixes or whatever.

JorisE73 said:

Neversin said:

Read Bart's update from an interview in "De Morgen" with Howe and you'll see that any useful info from people who followed and researched Prince and his music will be consciously neglected...

Given the NDA's he signed I get that discussions with fans for input could be in breach of that, but not doing anything or not let them know what people like you know about his recordings would be a missed oportunity to maybe steer thing in the right direction.

Honestly I don't thnk Prince would have liked that Mr. Spotify Troy Carter (a service he famously didn't like) and WB (we all know how he thought about them) yes-man Michael Howe are in charge of handling his recordings.

All in all, don;t give up or else the next thing you know we'll be getting are posthumous Justin Timberlake collaborations or Questlove remixes or whatever.

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I'm afraid you're still missing the point that Michael Howe is not running the Estate. The big decisions are not made by him but by Comerica Bank. Fighting for changes in how one or two releases are produced is almost pointless while there is absolutely no vision, no concept and there are no guidelines for a comprehensive, well-researched and curated, long-term release program and no vision for preserving Prince's legacy that goes beyond his recorded music archive.
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My concept and plans I mentioned earlier address all these issues but would require agreement from both the heirs and the Prince Estate administrators at Comerica. Michael Howe does not have the power to steer the boat in the right direction.
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[Edited 6/12/19 2:32am]

Kares said:

I'm afraid you're still missing the point that Michael Howe is not running the Estate. The big decisions are not made by him but by Comerica Bank.

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A bank (i.e.: money) in charge of a release startegy, a plan?

If so: it looks like a rather poor attempt at profit maximization.

Or what am I missing?

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Fighting for changes in how one or two releases are produced is almost pointless while there is absolutely no vision, no concept and there are no guidelines for a comprehensive, well-researced and curated, long-term release program and no vision for preserving Prince's legacy that goes beyond his recorded music archive.
.

My concept and plans I mentioned earlier address all these issues but would require agreement from both the heirs and the Prince Estate administrators at Comerica. Michael Howe does not have the power to steer the boat in the right direction.
.

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Amen...!

Kares said:

JorisE73 said:

Given the NDA's he signed I get that discussions with fans for input could be in breach of that, but not doing anything or not let them know what people like you know about his recordings would be a missed oportunity to maybe steer thing in the right direction.

Honestly I don't thnk Prince would have liked that Mr. Spotify Troy Carter (a service he famously didn't like) and WB (we all know how he thought about them) yes-man Michael Howe are in charge of handling his recordings.

All in all, don;t give up or else the next thing you know we'll be getting are posthumous Justin Timberlake collaborations or Questlove remixes or whatever.

.
I'm afraid you're still missing the point that Michael Howe is not running the Estate. The big decisions are not made by him but by Comerica Bank. Fighting for changes in how one or two releases are produced is almost pointless while there is absolutely no vision, no concept and there are no guidelines for a comprehensive, well-researched and curated, long-term release program and no vision for preserving Prince's legacy that goes beyond his recorded music archive.
.

My concept and plans I mentioned earlier address all these issues but would require agreement from both the heirs and the Prince Estate administrators at Comerica. Michael Howe does not have the power to steer the boat in the right direction.
.

[Edited 6/12/19 2:32am]

I know Howe is not running the Estate but he has enough power to push forward a release like the NC2U single and teh Piano and Mic disk in favour of other releases, those were his choices, of course with the approval of Comerica and all, but still.

JorisE73 said:

Kares said:

.
I'm afraid you're still missing the point that Michael Howe is not running the Estate. The big decisions are not made by him but by Comerica Bank. Fighting for changes in how one or two releases are produced is almost pointless while there is absolutely no vision, no concept and there are no guidelines for a comprehensive, well-researched and curated, long-term release program and no vision for preserving Prince's legacy that goes beyond his recorded music archive.
.

My concept and plans I mentioned earlier address all these issues but would require agreement from both the heirs and the Prince Estate administrators at Comerica. Michael Howe does not have the power to steer the boat in the right direction.
.

[Edited 6/12/19 2:32am]

I know Howe is not running the Estate but he has enough power to push forward a release like the NC2U single and teh Piano and Mic disk in favour of other releases, those were his choices, of course with the approval of Comerica and all, but still.

.

Again: Fighting for changes in how one or two releases are produced is almost pointless while there is absolutely no vision, no concept and there are no guidelines for a comprehensive, well-researched and curated, long-term release program and no vision for preserving Prince's legacy that goes beyond his recorded music archive.

Well: without a vision, a plan, a strategy or whatever you may call it the profit maximization will not happen nor will the fans be maximally happy.

This means that quality of these releases will be suboptimal, that the release schedule is suboptimal and that the interest of the fans will be suboptimally served.

Let alone the perspective that if we were to live another 40 years more than half of the Vault should be released in that timeframe. They cannot make that happen with the current ways of operation.

mbdtyler said:

do the drums in "Manic Monday" sound muddy to anyone else? It's really noticeable in the intro, but every fill and snare roll throughout sounds muddy

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Simply compare to the Bangles' CD version or the ones on youtube.

The originals version sounds darker, the Bangles' version is a bit brighter.

This is also true w.r.t. the drums.

So the `Originals team` (hello Michael!) did not try to match the sound of the released version or at least they failed here.

udo said:

mbdtyler said:

do the drums in "Manic Monday" sound muddy to anyone else? It's really noticeable in the intro, but every fill and snare roll throughout sounds muddy

.

Simply compare to the Bangles' CD version or the ones on youtube.

The originals version sounds darker, the Bangles' version is a bit brighter.

This is also true w.r.t. the drums.

So the `Originals team` (hello Michael!) did not try to match the sound of the released version or at least they failed here.

.
Why would one compare the Bangles' version to Prince's? You do know the Bangles recorded their own version, right? And even if they reused any parts of Prince's recording, Prince had nothing to do with their production.

udo said:

So the `Originals team` (hello Michael!) did not try to match the sound of the released version or at least they failed here.

I don't think that was wver the intention of this release was it?

udo said:

love2thenines2003 said:

....so this initial version is not only WDC + the bass...but more a complex mix ! Pleaz....release it !

.

So that will be the un-original mix..

There's a good chance the "full" version contains the arrangements we hear in the live ad libs, from '84 to '88.

goosepumble said:

It's a bit of a weak album concept, but I am glad to hear the songs in a better quality nonetheless. Given the concept and what's here, I wish they'd also included Prince's versions of Desire and Mutiny. I love Prince's version of Desire.

Agree... Don't know really how I feel... Is this a "solid" release, or were we expecting more as usual...

The concept was lacking, just random songs from the vault put together claming it was "originals", yet there are so many more great songs missing... I listened to this for the past 4 days, but tbh it's a little underwhelming now. It's like ok the interest has peaked now, next release, as selfish as it sounds...

But will I go back to this release as a regular listen, maybe some songs, but as a whole I doubt it.

[Edited 6/12/19 7:11am]

i'm ready to move on to the next release

i'm totally in love with a few of these tracks, don't get me wrong.

but i'm anxious to hear an entire album of new material, wether
it's from the 80s, the 90s or the 00s.

NME review: https://www.nme.com/revie...als-review

Yet another interview with Peggy McReary, this time in Mixdown: http://mixdownmag.com.au/...e-archives

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However, this seems to be the same one that was posted @ https://wordsbywatts.com....ng-prince/ . (Though I don't think that has been posted already.)

I have to admit that my high opinion of Originals is based on the low bar that was set by Purple Rain Deluxe and Piano & Microphone 1983. The vault is full of excellent studio and live material.

Kares said:

udo said:

.

Simply compare to the Bangles' CD version or the ones on youtube.

The originals version sounds darker, the Bangles' version is a bit brighter.

This is also true w.r.t. the drums.

So the `Originals team` (hello Michael!) did not try to match the sound of the released version or at least they failed here.

.
Why would one compare the Bangles' version to Prince's? You do know the Bangles recorded their own version, right? And even if they reused any parts of Prince's recording, Prince had nothing to do with their production.

Priceless.

After seeing the different opinions expressed in the forum by really expert users in this field, I have the feeling that I’m missing something.

The new mixes are giving a lot to talk about, and songs like Holly Rock are not liking in terms of the final mix. Someone who has analyzed it, please, can shed some light on what specific aspects cause that bad impression?

Personally I am enjoying the mix a lot, where the amount of tracks can seem a little chaotic but it is funky as hell. I also appreciate the increase on bass that was usually not common in the recordings of that era.

Thanks