I've been a fan of Prince since 1999 (the album, not the year). It's minimalist approach, from the sparse drum machines to cold synths, helped lay the groundwork for what I would spend listening to for the next quarter decade. It was the first time I had heard drum machines used so predominately on an album and I've been fascinated with them ever since. Because Prince wanted total control of his recordings, he found them useful to hash out his ideas quicker and more economically. He could play the drums, but it didn't matter, he liked the fresh sound (at that time) of the synthetic sounding drums. The machine of his choice was the Linn LM-1.
Designed in 1979 by Roger Linn, it kickstarted the music industry's interest in drum machines. Below is a link to the video of "1999". Don't let the drummer fool you, all drums were programmed in the studio. For the sake of a live show, the Linn was connected to drum pads so it's sounds could be re-produced in conjunction with the live drummer. Prince used the Linn Drum extensively until about 1987 but recently returned to it for his recent LP entitled MPLSoUND.
1999 Video
