Search - Robert Fripp :: Exposure

Your House, My House

Mr. Richard D. Coreno | Berea, Ohio USA | 03/08/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The art of a novel was initially released in June 1979, as Robert Fripp presented 15 brilliant chapters between the Preface and Postscript.



Through the ripping, punk-inspired, You Burn Me Up I'm A Cigarette, a special elegance in Mary, the enchantment in Here Comes the Flood and the Beat Generation colliding with new-wave in the title cut, this is a landmark release that retains a freshness and urgency some 30 years later.



The 2-disc set contains the original album release and 22 bonus cuts, with a booklet which has excerpts from Fripp's personal notes during the remastering process. Exposure is a portrait in sound where every listener will find a biographical sketch in the mix."

I think that it could be commercial

David Newman | easton | 06/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I purchased the original album upon release and wore it out. The strange diversity of musical styles was amazing to me. Then it was released on cd and some things were different and I liked it less - sorry I no longer remember those differences. Then come this remastered gem - with two discs. Ok, the first disc is the one I have loved for many years. Fripp bringing in his progressive friends and Terre Roche to produce an unbelievable piece of music. But now for the first time I can hear on the second disc Daryl Hall's vocals as they were meant to appear on the original album (D. Harry's vocals are still not available) I begin to understand what Fripp meant when the album started with "I think that it could be commercial". Imagine fripp and friends with Hall and Harry as contributors? One wonders if extraordinary things may have happened if the original Fripp concept had been realized. That is what makes this the most interesting and amazing expanded cd I have ever purchased. HA! Record company greed may have led to the production of one of the most amazing albums ever - yet one may still wonder at what might have been"

No clever title here: this album is too personal a piece of

Erica Bell | Washington State | 05/29/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"By turns tender and gentle and utterly depraved, Robert Fripp's "Exposure" came out in 1979. As if I wasn't confused enough, at age seventeen! Nothing could have prepared me for the new, evolved and murderous Fripp.



Afterwards I never doubted his perception again. I was so musically in love I didn't know what to do with myself. He left the mark of his sensibilities on me that still burns in places. He was a fever it took me a VERY long time to get over.



You could say that Exposure is a concept album, although the "concept" is more a leitmotif, both lyrically and tonally. And the theme isn't New York or urban life either, despite Fripp having lived in Hell's Kitchen while he wrote these songs. Instead, the emphasis is on claustrophobic humanity and maddening family, all psychically imposing on each other. "You burn me up I'm a cigarette / Demanding my attention which you're not gonna get", Fripp sings in the second track, setting the tone for much of the remaining material. This song is a black send-up of early rock and roll--a familiar blues riff that dissolves into mayhem during the chorus. Like us, perhaps?



But that's just beginning. Because the real Fripp (one side of his art, at least) comes crashing down--dissonant, mathematically pure, almost Bach-like weaving around various chords in "Breathless" prepares you for the meat: "Disengage", where Joanna Walton's lyrics play into what would had come to be the Bowie/Fripp/Gabriel trademark dystopic paranoia--



"Mrs. Marion is strict with her servant

Behind locked doors over coffee they speak

They speak to my sister my parents

And I'm trying hard not to shriek

Disengage"



I had a revelation about ten years ago, listening to Radiohead: Jonny Greenwood had a spiritual father in the dissonance of Robert Fripp. It's remarkably beautiful, especially set against songs featuring his Frippertronics, like "Chicago", the tender "Mary" (sung by Terre Roche) and even straight love songs like the expansive "North Star", sung by the Phily Soul king, Daryl Hall. Then there are the two "Water Music" Frippertronics--the warm, melding guitar loops settling in on your ears like comfortable drugs. Delicious.



There were three masterpieces here. Experiencing "NY3" is like being stuffed in a box with madmen--an argument between three people. Fripp's guitar is on fire, so confident, distracted and so damn fast--as good as anything Tool wrote, and twenty-five years earlier. "I May Not Have Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough of You" again underlines the album's mutinous rebellion against communion. Lastly, Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood" in a newer, more skeletal form and oh, is it lovely. It's open, lost vibe so underlines the claustrophobia of what's come before...



Am I just being emotional? I listen to him now and the music hasn't aged a bit. Instruments fade in and out of fashion, but skill and artistry never do. For me, Robert Fripp isn't just one of the world's top guitarists-- he simply IS the best. Listening to him again now fills me with joy.

"