Prince: N. E. W. S.

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * *)

To tell the truth, I don't think I've heard a note by the wee fellah since he started delivering triple albums over the net a decade ago. But this sounded tempting: four instrumentals recorded in a day and each clocking in around 15 minutes. Not an aural sex crime in earshot apparently, and maybe the start to his jazz career. In an irritating foldout cover.

Entitled North, East, West and South (it's doubtless a concept, but who really cares?) the four tracks skirt close to mellow fusion of the mid-70s with his customary sense of melodic smarts married to a jazz sensibility. On North he takes the slo-cruising sound of George Benson into scouring and inventive guitar work which wouldn't have sounded out of place on Frank Zappa's Shut Up and Play Your Guitar album, then steps back to let a quasi-classical, marginally new-age piano take over, then the poking tenor sax from Eric Leeds to snake it down to the lazy ambient coda.

East, not unexpectedly, noodles its way to life through vaguely North African melodies, but by the time it hits its pace over rapid-fire drumming and Prince hauls out the digital keyboards, it's like the working drawing for an old Weather Report track with Leeds' tenor skittering around. Then it descends to new- age, meditative minimalism, then some hard rock chords ... And so on.

South brings in the wah-wah and more mellow sax before going lightly southern funk, then more guitar grit, and lazy sax ... And so on. The rest and West you could discover for yourself if you so chose.

It's a curate's egg and, yes, self-indulgent - however, who are artists supposed to indulge, their audience? But he's reached back to mid-70s jazz (and new-agers like Kitaro) and has pulled in all the fusion routines that jazz instrumentation offers. Leeds makes as much of an impression as the little guy.

So where once he mimicked Hendrix-funk, Prince now looks to the quieter moments of Zappa and Miles Davis' early 70s work for his reference points. It's hardly innovative or stop-the-press stuff, but it's attractive sometimes and - here's a word you didn't think you'd hear about a Prince album - inoffensive. And that's the end of the N. E. W. S.

Label: NPG