25 years ago today, Prince painted his masterpiece: "Sign o' the Times" →[More:]
It was a cobbled together patchwork of songs that had originally been recorded for various unreleased projects - the aborted ‘Dream Factory’ LP, an album to be credited to the alter-ego “Camille” featuring Prince’s vocals manipulated and sped-up, and the proposed 3-LP set ‘Crystal Ball’ which was whittled down to 2 discs at the record company’s insistence. Many of the tracks recorded during this period remain unreleased but have been widely bootlegged, so in some respects the mystique of ‘Sign o’ the Times’ has always suffered a bit for imaging what it might have been. But while diehard fans will continue to pine for the release of outtakes from the era, it hardly seems fair to judge an album by what it doesn’t include – and without question ‘Sign o’ The Times’ is still a phenomenal record. The diversity, perhaps owing to the unfocused nature of its genesis, is its greatest strength.
The sound of
Sign o' the Times is the sound of the
Fairlight CMI - then a state-of-the-art digital sampling synthesizer, today an
iOS app.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
