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Jon Bream talks 2 Minnesota Radio about visit 2 Paisley Park 2 hear new tracks (Audio)

Jon Bream appeared on local Minnesota radio station WCCO News Talk, to discuss his experience visiting Paisley Park at the weekend and hearing new tracks from another new Prince album.  If you're not keeping up, this is separate from the previously touted 3rdEyeGirl record, Plectrum Electrum.

Bream was called by Paisley Park whilst working elsewhere and summoned to checkout some new music by Prince.  Bream writes for the Star Tribune, Minneapolis and has covered Prince's career since it began - they have a long history together.  Bream captured the amazing atmosphere around the Gold Tour in the liner notes to The Gold Experience album.  So it was not so unusual for Prince to call Jon up to check this stuff out.  Bream describes a relationship of mutual respect between him and Prince.

Bream describes being taken into Studio B at Paisley Park by staff, with one other reporter, where the band and tour manager were waiting.  Prince was not present.  He describes listening to two tracks before Prince called in on speaker phone to get feedback and discuss his frustrations with Warner Bros.

The first track he describes as funky and powerful, rap-style vocals and Prince in one-man band mode. Covering all the instruments himself and using those trademark synthetic drum machine sounds, talking about how he used to be wild & rude.  Sounds funky to me!

It appears he didn't like the second track so much, describing it as complex and difficult to grasp.

At this point, Prince calls in and is put on speaker phone to get feedback on the tracks.  Bream apparently had an engaging exchange with Prince about his views on the music while others in the room didn't have an awful lot to say.

It would have been really nice to hear a lot more about the music, but we get a lot more about Breams relationship with Prince and what Prince is saying about about ongoing frustrations with Warner Bros.

What we did hear is that Prince feels that he has a cohesive set of songs to put out.  Bream heard four of them and they peaked his interest - but as ever the record industry is apparently slowing down the process of getting the music out.  This seems an odd statement, given the lack of recent releases before the WB deal.  Here's hoping it all gets straightened out soon, as even just that first track sounds interesting....

You can listen to the interview below:






Thanks to Steve Clarke for his help with this piece

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