Log #209 - Sunday Bible Class

Exposure was Robert Fripp's first solo album released in 1979. It's a real dolly mixture of new wave rock, pop, post punk, and blues (and very little prog, ambient, or frippertronics, surprisingly). Guest singers included Daryl Hall and Peter Gabriel. More punky singing is provided by Peter Hammill and Terre Roche.

Mostly consisting of short pop songs there are nevertheless some trail blazing instrumental workouts like the brilliant Breathless which is reminiscent of Red and Fracture. 

Side two does veer off into some more experimental work with spoken samples. But it's not until the ambient drone of Urban Landscape and the Water Music loops does Exposure really touch upon what I was expecting.

All in all it sounds like Fripp was throwing everything into this album - all his current (New York and Berlin) influences, and as a result, although there are some decent singles, the album as a whole sounds disjointed. 

To read an extended review of Exposure please click here>>

King Crimson - Starless And Bible Black
Robert Fripp - Exposure
King Crimson - Three Of A Perfect Pair
King Crimson - Thrak
King Crimson - The Construkction of Light
King Crimson - The Power To Believe

Starless And Bible Black is an excellent Crimson album - coming in between the more celebrated Larks' Tongues In Aspic and Red it is nevertheless equally as powerful. I just love the squishy bass guitar and Fripp's distorted arpeggios like on Lament (very similar to One More Red Nightmare).

Some tracks (from this partially live recording) are apparent jams that chug along just the right side of chaos (We'll Let You Know, The Mincer and most of all the title track). The Night Watch is one of King Crimson's most gorgeous songs with a typically melodic Fripp solo (I read somewhere that some of these solos are track reversed and this one does sound like it actually). Trio is a classical piece reminiscent of the work on the jazzy Islands. The album ends on the monumental and infamous Fracture instrumental with Fripp's fingers exploring the dusty parts of the fretboard with series of ascending guitar scales (a theme he would revisit in the following Red album and the "Crimson mk. III" trio of albums retained in the player this week).

Great minimalist album art too which I've opted for at the head of the post over Fripp's less interesting Exposure:

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Robert Fripp's (First) Comeback Album

The first part of Robert Fripp's fabled 'Drive to 1981', Exposure, his lone true solo album, is the contradictorily beautiful piece of work that reintroduced the King Crimson leader back onto the music scene in 1979. Galvanised into action by his guest appearance on David Bowie's Heroes, Fripp made an album in New York that neatly précised his past, present and future working primarily with Daryl Hall.

However, when Hall's manager, Tommy Mottola, was horrified with the results, Fripp kept two of his vocal performances and brought in guests such as Peter Hammill and Terre Roche to sing the other parts alongside stellar players such as Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno and Phil Collins. As a result, it remains one of the most nervously thrilling of all Fripp's recordings.

With its speech interjections, the work's light and shade seems in sharper relief than ever. The instrumental Breathless -Larks Tongues III in all but name -is as aggressive as the Hall-voiced North Star is pure and mellow. The extremist, blocky funk of the title track and the subtle understatement of Here Comes The Flood take back Gabriel's originals and render them poignant.

With the comprehensive annotation and attention to detail that could only happen with a Fripp release, Exposure remains a perfect entry point for those who want to know quite how thrilling the art-rock scene was at the turn of the 80s.



Shared under Creative Commons and adapted slightly from an original review by Daryl Easlea.

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