While there may have been some editing sleight of hand to make these 35 minutes appear to be a continuous performance, there's no production to speak of, yet it still bears the hallmarks of a studio recording the music is too clear to be anything but. For one, there's a level of intimacy on Piano & a Microphone unlike anything else in Prince's catalog. Its prosaic title is a precise description of the album's content - it is nothing more than Prince sitting at a piano, playing whatever comes to his mind for just over half an hour - yet even if the record delivers upon that promise, it's not quite as simple as it seems. As the first major release from Prince's vault (the 2017 expanded edition of Purple Rain was announced prior to his 2016 death), Piano & a Microphone 1983 is disarmingly casual.
