You could be forgiven for feeling slightly surprised at the fuss, given that this is not the first time Prince has played a secret gig at a relatively small London venue – he played just down the road, at Koko, in 2007 – and, indeed, given Prince's recent career as a recording artist.You could argue forever over what was his last genuinely great album (Lovesexy? Diamonds and Pearls? The Love Symbol?) but whichever one you plump for, it was released a very long time ago.Even Prince diehards would hardly be up to claiming that the music he has released over the past 20 years – and there's been a lot of it – matches his 80s output: there have been plenty of great tracks, but you had to sift through vast tracts of other stuff to find them.It may be that the forthcoming Plectrum Electrum is a return to prime Parade/Sign o' the Times form, but you wouldn't bet on it. He has somehow managed to seem wildly out of step with prevalent trends, even as his classic albums became an unimpeachable touchstone for a variety of new artists. "The internet's completely over," he announced four years ago – which, as predictions go, is right up there with, "Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein."But as his arrival in London proves, if Prince has allowed his quality control to slip, he has never lost his sense of occasion. Early in his career, he seemed to decide that pop music was intrinsically linked with ostentatious gestures and lavish presentation. Perhaps this was a means of overcoming his crippling shyness and – incredible as this now seems – initial doubts over whether he could cut it as a live performer: shortly after the release of his debut album, For You, his record label, Warner Bros, refused to let him tour after witnessing a club show in Minneapolis, claiming that he wasn't ready yet.And ostentatious gestures and lavish presentation, rather than the quality of his new records, are the means by which he has kept public interest bubbling in recent years: not a UK tour, but 21 nights at the O2 Arena, complete with after-hours shows at the IndigO2 nightclub; giving away his new albums free with newspapers; inviting journalists and fans to his Los Angeles home or to the Paisley Park complex in Minneapolis for parties to launch albums instead of submitting to the usual round of encounters with the press; launching his own nightclub in Las Vegas where he played twice weekly for six months; turning up in Lianne La Havas's front room to premiere Plectrum Electrum.Of course, virtually every major artist tries to come up with a grand scheme to attract the maximum attention to their new album's release. If Prince's seem to work better than most, that's probably because he is so adept at manipulating the mystique that still envelops him in a pop world where mystery has become a very rare commodity indeed. It's hard to think of an artist who has remained quite so inscrutable while releasing quite so much music.From Syd Barrett to Sly Stone to Scott Walker, mythic rock and pop stars tend to become mythic because they've spent long periods out of the public eye, but Prince has done anything but: since his mid-90s departure from Warner Bros, he's released 22 albums and untold other tracks via his NPG Music Club, gone on 13 tours, been nominated for 14 Grammys and appeared at countless other awards ceremonies, and performed at the Super Bowl in front of 140 million viewers.But he hides in plain sight. All attempts to penetrate the veil of secrecy fail: the rare interviews he gives are pretty gnomic – a state of affairs compounded by his refusal to allow journalists to record their conversations . And the reader who dives into Matt Thorne's 500-page book Prince, a self-styled "definitive portrait of the artist and his incomparable musical catalogue" that meticulously catalogues everything from his unreleased tracks to his onstage asides, and which includes a fairly staggering 50 pages of footnotes, comes out the other side almost none the wiser about the man himself.The secret gigs, small-hours after-show club performances and parties at his home come with the implicit, tantalising suggestion that those who attend are going to get closer to, and maybe learn something more about, an artist who remains almost completely unknowable. Of course, they never do. The mystique remains intact, which is just as well: aside from his musical talent, it's Prince's greatest asset.(theguardian.com)ANN.Az