Search - Chrome :: Red Exposure

Cleopatra Exposed

Chromefreak | 02/20/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"While not one of Chrome's finest efforts, "Red Exposure" is undeniably interesting for its wildly innovative use of early tape loop effects, pitch-shifted vocals and mutant drum programming, not to mention Helios Creed's sinister buzzsaw guitar mayhem. There are certainly some great songs here: the proto-industrial dance anthem "New Age," the eerie "Eyes on Mars," the Stooges-inspired "Animal," the weirdly evocative "Eyes in the Center," and the ominous kraut-rocking "Static Gravity." "Red Exposure" rates three stars--possibly three and half--for the music alone. However, I've downgraded this CD reissue to two stars because of Cleopatra's lack of attention to detail and its apparently careless attitude toward both sound and graphic reproduction. First of all, the spine reads "Retro Transmission," not "Red Exposure," as it obviously should. There's simply no excuse for such carelessness, but then this is the kind of amateurish CD reproductions many of us have come to expect from Cleopatra. Secondly, whoever mastered this disc should be horse-whipped: the material on the disc hasn't been mastered in the best sense of the word but simply digitally edited and normalized. Chrome certainly deserved better than this shoddy post-mortem exhumation from the vaults. Cleopatra comes across as nothing more than an opportunistic grave robber attempting to cash in on yet another rock 'n' roll corpse. Pass on this one and go out and buy the real "Red Exposure" on LP. There are still plenty of copies to be had on Ebay[...]"