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Robert Fripp - Exposure CD (album) cover

EXPOSURE

Robert Fripp

 

Eclectic Prog

3.66 | 254 ratings

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friso
Prog Reviewer
3 stars Robert Fripp - Exposure (1979)

* This is my 225th review! Time for a promotion isn't it? I would enter the list of 100 MOST PROLIFIC REVIEWERS on number 69. *

I picked this up at a second hand market at Queensday here in the Netherlands. Just two euro's for such a vinyl record seem quite fair!

This Robert Fripp debut album isn't necessarily important for King Crimson fans. It has no longer compositions, almost all tracks are four minutes or even shorter. The album is very eclectic. Styles included are rock'n roll (on You Burn me Up), King Crimson like heavy metal, vocal based songs like Mary (with great female vocal) and Peter Gabriels Here Comes the Flood. Also we have a sound-scape track (Water music) and some psycho metal tracks with Peter Hammill going to the extremes with his vocals. The title track Exposure is a psychedelic but boring repetitive track.

An album with this cast should be a recipe for a masterpiece: Fripp, Gabriel, Hammill, Phil Collins (drums only), Tony Levin on bass and female vocals of Daryl Hall among. But as with your favorite foods, combining those will not always make a good meal. Fripp's debut sounds in-cohesive, chaotic, hasty, unfinished, anarchistic and at times confused. Some of the lyrics (especially the spoken word parts) are quite confronting. They do give an intimate view of the confused world of mister Fripp. The aggression of this album is either subtle or right in your face.

My favorite parts of the album are the KC-like Breathless, the gentle Mary and Gabriels Here Comes the Flood. The last track is peaceful and in combination with the sound-scapes at the end of the album it gives a feeling like you're left behind with the silence after a storm. The parts with Peter Hammill were a disappointment for me, his vocals are to extreme here and out of place (especially on the pointless That's the Way it is part).

Conclusion. This album has some great moments, but overall it's quite depressing and to aggressive for me. The album feels very much like an intense inner struggle that by surprise has a quite reasonable ending. The performances of the known prog artists aren't always functional and the album could have used some more cohesive elements. Still this album is recommend to dedicated followers of Fripp and KC and people who like very psychedelic and confronting music. Three stars because of some great moments, but still this ain't something I'm going to enjoy very often.

friso | 3/5 |

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