After listening to the SOTT deluxe, then the symbol album, then Come, Gold Experience, Chaos and Disorder, and now Emancipation.

Well there is a general loss of taste when it comes to the mix and arrangement (with an odd exception here and there; like the exquisitely minimal, tasetfully unique, and well arranged "Dig U Better Dead" or "Had U" or "Slave" or "319".

Going back to the symbol album, the best produced ones are My Name is Prince, Sexy MF, 7, Damn U, Arrogance, The Flow, 3 Chains of Gold, Sacrifice of Victor. Thats quite a few.

But in other cases, he resorts to really cheap bright keyboard voices (lots of them), and just the most basic effects and predictable arrangements (especially on Emancipation tracks). It's like he stopped trying to shape the songs into something unique. Like he moved quick, hoping that the energy would make it cohesive (which is something I feel he did with Lovesexy, but he still infused it with cool absolute weirdness throughout)

But "Come" is a big exception. That album has a lot of taste and discipline in how it's arranged and mixed. In fact, it really holds up well to my ears. "Pheremone" is a work of art in terms of the sound.

I wish I could get in there and mute instruments, take off too much reverb, and make my own mixes (for myself) of some of those weakly produced tracks on other albums.

The core songwriting is decent. There's a huge variety. It's just that he stopped taking the time to find a "sound" as they say. He stopped coming back to a song and worrying about it - so I suspect.

The outro of "In this Bed I Scream" where this low screeching guitar line comes in that sounds like scraped metal is cool, but all the other noises are SO GENERIC. why couldn't he have come back to that song, pulled that sound through the whole thing, and replaced all other instruments?

Someday in the future maybe they'll release these albums "Garage Band" style, where you have access to all the tracksa and could mix it to your personal liking. I'd buy each album for a hundred bucks to be able to play like that.

This post is only about that run of albums listed. I'm listening on a full range speaker system with an entry audiophile level subwoofer.

[Edited 1/24/21 15:46pm]

Yeah, some good songs buried/lost under questionable production. It's a taste thing.

he was never a kind of artist to sit in the studio to see what kind of sounds were cool or work on getting a sound, he was a get in there, get the song out, and move on to the next one kind of artist.

only diff in the 80s was that he was looking for more unusual sounds.

later on, he didnt care about that so much, and wanted more typical sounds.

Okay, I hit the Crystal Ball "bootleg" compilation... and all of a sudden the mixes are great on the first 2 discs. Even the newer stuff (but of course that was two remixes from the "Come" era, which I like, right?)

Wow, this sequencing and mood is miles more enjoyable than the supposedly strategized "Emancipation". And the production is so much more disciplined than "The Gold Experience". Stuff like "Da Bang" and "What's My Name?" are great.

BUT... here comes that 3rd disc, which I remember being messy.

It is strange that "Come" and "Gold" are so different in mood, and production dicipline yet had songs traded back and forth in the album demo stages. Personally I think "Days of Wild" the studio track should have been on one of them, maybe actually on "Come" instead of "Gold". It has a tight, controlled, experimental sound, and that almost too-cool-to-raise-my-tone vocal.