IMHO this song "Violet" by Seal & Guy Sigsworth (one half of Frou Frou, along with Imogen Heap) is one of the greatest. Back in 1991 I purchased this CD-single and everything else to do with the...
IMHO this song "Violet" by Seal & Guy Sigsworth (one half of Frou Frou, along with Imogen Heap) is one of the greatest.
Back in 1991 I purchased this CD-single and everything else to do with the Seal album. Whilst making my latest DJ mix at the weekend I was thinking about the different versions of the song and was surprised this version didn't exist online, or on streaming. So I ordered it (again, 34 years later) off eBay as that was easier than rooting around in storage.
I wonder if this unique version is a very early recording, or even the earliest? The lyrics and delivery still seem to be a bit uncertain and feel like a work in progress.
Lovely track. I remember somebody back then telling me that Seal was in a different, fee at more musical category from others on the Batman Forever soundtrack (I was 6, so that soundtrack was...
Lovely track. I remember somebody back then telling me that Seal was in a different, fee at more musical category from others on the Batman Forever soundtrack (I was 6, so that soundtrack was where Seal came from for all I knew).
Sigworth gives me Lyle Mays/Pat Metheny vibes here with that whimsical, Peter Gabriel meets adult contemporary thing that was popular at the time.
It's no surprise that Imogen/Frou Frou sounds as rich as it does him him behind it.
...i have a few thousand compact discs in our library, but my only CDs ever to have suffered disc rot were seal's maxi-singles from his debut album: every. single. one. ...not sure what was going...
...i have a few thousand compact discs in our library, but my only CDs ever to have suffered disc rot were seal's maxi-singles from his debut album: every. single. one.
...not sure what was going on in the factory when those discs were pressed, but i can only presume that they must have all been printed together in a single production run, despite being issued one at a time over the course of a year or so, so they all shared a common production defect...anyway, interesting trivia: this was right around the time that sony declared their discs had a zero percent defect rate and accordingly would no longer accept any retail returns, which back-to-back with the whole SCMS / AHRA fiasco led to me boycotting all sony products for about a quarter-century, at least until my wife reeeally wanted to play the last of us so i finally broke down and bought her a playstation for christmas, before it eventually was ported to windows a few years later and she gave away her playstation for free, essentially-unplayed...
...so anyway, where was i?..right, seal's debut album and its accompanying maxi-singles were peak-music-production, when the recording industry was at the absolute top of its craft, deep-pocketed art and engineering efforts with the technology to make the most of its potential...sadly, i can't play my original maxi-single discs anymore, only in glitchy fits-and-starts, but the album still sounds stunning on a good stereo...
It really was an amazing time for music. This CD single is in good condition, though smelling a bit mouldy. I dare not think about my CDs in storage. If you’ve not read Trevor Horn’s...
It really was an amazing time for music. This CD single is in good condition, though smelling a bit mouldy. I dare not think about my CDs in storage.
If you’ve not read Trevor Horn’s (ghost-written) auto-biography "Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT", I can highly recommend it!
IMHO this song "Violet" by Seal & Guy Sigsworth (one half of Frou Frou, along with Imogen Heap) is one of the greatest.
Back in 1991 I purchased this CD-single and everything else to do with the Seal album. Whilst making my latest DJ mix at the weekend I was thinking about the different versions of the song and was surprised this version didn't exist online, or on streaming. So I ordered it (again, 34 years later) off eBay as that was easier than rooting around in storage.
I wonder if this unique version is a very early recording, or even the earliest? The lyrics and delivery still seem to be a bit uncertain and feel like a work in progress.
Other versions of Violet worth a listen:
The story of the Premix version of the album is worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(1991_album)
Lovely track. I remember somebody back then telling me that Seal was in a different, fee at more musical category from others on the Batman Forever soundtrack (I was 6, so that soundtrack was where Seal came from for all I knew).
Sigworth gives me Lyle Mays/Pat Metheny vibes here with that whimsical, Peter Gabriel meets adult contemporary thing that was popular at the time.
It's no surprise that Imogen/Frou Frou sounds as rich as it does him him behind it.
...i have a few thousand compact discs in our library, but my only CDs ever to have suffered disc rot were seal's maxi-singles from his debut album: every. single. one.
...not sure what was going on in the factory when those discs were pressed, but i can only presume that they must have all been printed together in a single production run, despite being issued one at a time over the course of a year or so, so they all shared a common production defect...anyway, interesting trivia: this was right around the time that sony declared their discs had a zero percent defect rate and accordingly would no longer accept any retail returns, which back-to-back with the whole SCMS / AHRA fiasco led to me boycotting all sony products for about a quarter-century, at least until my wife reeeally wanted to play the last of us so i finally broke down and bought her a playstation for christmas, before it eventually was ported to windows a few years later and she gave away her playstation for free, essentially-unplayed...
...so anyway, where was i?..right, seal's debut album and its accompanying maxi-singles were peak-music-production, when the recording industry was at the absolute top of its craft, deep-pocketed art and engineering efforts with the technology to make the most of its potential...sadly, i can't play my original maxi-single discs anymore, only in glitchy fits-and-starts, but the album still sounds stunning on a good stereo...
.....great stuff!...
It really was an amazing time for music. This CD single is in good condition, though smelling a bit mouldy. I dare not think about my CDs in storage.
If you’ve not read Trevor Horn’s (ghost-written) auto-biography "Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT", I can highly recommend it!