HardReviews 7
by Martin Popoff

Robert Fripp - Exposure
(DGM)

Why Fripp on a metal site? Well, Crimson are the dark guitary lords of prog and metalheads unsurprisingly dig them, and also because this is the heaviest and most song-based and guitar-strafed Fripp solo album. In fact, it's the only one you really need, given that the catalogue is full of all manner of blagging on about nothing, new age coffee drippings everywhere, collaborations, explorations, most of it background music, and actually a lot of it intended as such along the same lines his buddy Eno and his snoozy airport effects. But Exposure rips a new one, shocks of rock everywhere, pre-Voivodian patterns all over, crazy prog drumming percolating along, sublime, gauzy, quiet respites burnt by manic panic. Recorded in New York during the death throes of punk ('77 through 79), Exposure gets to the point and then breaks the tip and mashes it into the page. Bits of spoken word are shattered by a googly Peter Hammill on vocals while all manner of guest fill the frenetic airwaves. Peter Gabriel is on board as well, singing his 'Here Comes The Flood'... Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta, XTC's Barry Andrews... it's like a prog Bilderberg getaway. But the raucous songs show an obscurely atonal Fripp in flight, 'Disengage' and 'NY3' capturing the jagged rip of Crimson classic Red, while 'You Burn Me Up I'm A Cigarette' is actually punk of sorts (Richard Hell, Television and Talking Heads sorts). A gorgeous, playful, edgy, always interesting record, Exposure is 17 tracks ranging from the bizarre to the beautiful to the blues of 'Chicago'. Hell, I've been listening to it for 25 years and always find new fodder for Frippertronic fun. This reissue adds a typically substantial, witty and fragmented Fripp-provided pile of notes. As well, the package is two CDs with some guff about remixing and re-sequencing and differences between a '79 and '83 and '85 edition, first edition, third edition, no mention of second edition, something about some extra Daryl Hall vocals (more weirdness - Fripp considers this album a trilogy - 'scuse me, an MOR trilogy - with Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel's second self-titled). Most important though are five bonus tracks, which are also just variants. Whatever - this is one of the great art rock albums ever, in the same ilk as Bowie's Scary Monsters, also forged around the same time, also with a heavy Fripp imprint.
Rating 10