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Sep 21, 2018These wonderful recordings provide yet more evidence of his colossal talent, and, tantalisingly, it appears that there are still more to come.
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Sep 24, 2018This album takes you under the piano, so to speak, witnessing genius casually at work.
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Sep 20, 2018While the session is informal--he sniffles now and then, and at times something rattles in the piano--the performance is not sloppy for a moment. The one-take, real-time vocals are exquisite. .. He shifts musical styles and vocal personae at whim--melancholy, playful, devout, flirtatious--yet it’s all Prince. ... It’s a glimpse of a notoriously private artist doing his mysterious work.
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Sep 25, 2018The “new” material on Piano & a Microphone has already circulated as bootlegs, but this album clarifies its details, rescues it from indistinct hiss.
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Sep 27, 2018Despite its intimacy, Piano & A Microphone doesn’t feel like trespassing on Prince because it doesn’t truly expose him. This recording doesn’t reveal the nuts-and-bolts inner workings of one of the greatest artists of all time. How could it? We get to listen as a visionary works with simple tools--and in the end, Prince’s genius remains as mysterious as ever.
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Q MagazineSep 25, 2018Intriguing abandoned avenues and sketches towards masterpieces. [Nov 2018, p.115]
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Sep 24, 2018Apart from its near-voyeuristic intimacy, Piano & A Microphone is most interesting when one imagines what this session meant to Prince at the time.
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Sep 24, 2018It’s an intensely intimate experience, appropriately voyeuristic and transgressive for a songwriter who wrote about both things so well. The versions of Prince’s better-known songs may disappoint some--Purple Rain is a meandering snippet--but what stays with you is the sense of talent, hardening to genius.
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Sep 21, 2018A fitting subtitle could be “Everything You Know About Funk is Wrong,” thanks to a couple of flat-out stunning solo performances on this session. This is not the Holy Grail of lost or shelved Prince albums.
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Sep 21, 2018As insightful as it is, Piano & A Microphone is also imperfect: You can hear him flub the rhythm and adjust the tone of his voice. But that’s also part of what makes it so moving now. Here is a truly spontaneous moment, something we can share with a departed icon, his 88 keys and anyone kind enough to dim the lights.
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MojoSep 20, 2018His piano-playing is a joy, his vocals a dramatis personae of lively characters. ... The whole thing feels--thrillingly, poignantly--like you're in the room with him. [Oct 2018, p.84]
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Sep 21, 2018Piano & A Microphone 1983 verges on postmortem voyeurism, but it’s also a unique insight into the way a notoriously private artist’s creative impulses fired.
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The WireNov 15, 2018This collection, and its atmosphere of sharing a bench with the 20th century’s Mozart as he explores still nascent songs, is an appropriately seductive tease to what will doubtless be a decades-long unearthing of the vault’s untold treasures. The songs themselves, as they’re presented here, really are secondary to this feeling, something like finding a just unearthed message from a departed loved one. [Dec 2018, p.69]
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Sep 21, 2018The first half of Piano & a Microphone 1983 unfolds as a kind of stream-of-consciousness medley. ... The album’s three previously unreleased songs are also of note, even if they’re just rough drafts.
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Sep 20, 2018The whole affair plays like the listener is eavesdropping on Prince creating, and there simply can't be a reissue more valuable than that.
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Sep 20, 2018It’s Prince as few have heard him: inspired, unrestrained, playing for no one but himself and the engineer who pushed the record button. Clearly this isn’t for everyone. But those looking for a glimpse into the artist, mostly pre-global fame, working out new and old material, will find it an invaluable and unique addition to his already bulging catalog.
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Classic Rock MagazineSep 20, 2018For serious fans--and them only--this album is a revelation. [Oct 2018, p.83]