ewe2
20-02-2006, 04:53 AM
Do you know you have an unpleasant nature,
And dislike people?
This is no obstacle to work.
-- J. G. Bennett, in Haaden Two
This album is way, way off the beaten track. The enigmatic Fripp, leader of the brilliant King Crimson collective, put this together in 1979 during one of his sabbaticals from Crimson, and was intended to be part of a trilogy of work in collaboration with Peter Gabriel and Daryl Hall (yes that Daryl Hall). The trilogy didn't come off (see Claas Kazzer's brilliant backgrounder (http://www.elephant-talk.com/exposure/expoweb1.htm)), but collaboration there was aplenty on Exposure, including Barry Andrews (of XTC and later Shriekback), Tony Levin, Phil Collins and Jerry Marotta. It's an important album because it's the first major work Fripp did with Levin prior to the reformation of Crimson, and some of the tracks very definitely point towards the new direction Crimson was to take. It is also extremely personal (most lyrics are by his lover of the time Joanna Walton), and for a solo album, extremely generous to both Daryl Hall and Peter Gabriel (who got to perform his own song on someone else's solo album!).
Frippertronics are Fripps word for his tape-loop electronic treatments of his guitar work, no doubt a steal from Eno, but a good steal that noone grudges, and it's easier to use the word to describe how Fripp built up a aural background to the album's tracks. In a sense he marries ambient guitar loops with intricate rhythms and the groundwork for the next 20 years was laid down in these sessions.
That doesn't alter the fact that it's obscure and uneven to the newcomer. Songs are linked by taped conversations and quotes from J. G. Bennett, whose philosophy was very important to Fripp at the time. According to Fripp it was intended as both a deliberate setting for the album's personal explorations and an attempt to make the album an ambient environment in its own right, so it is rightly a concept album, except the average listener would be totally unaware of this :)
A final note before I begin the blow-by-blow: the version of the album I mention here is known as the Definitive Edition (or DE) mix. There have been three from the 1979 LP (which I own), a 1985 remix and the DE reissue on CD in 1990. There are some differences, mainly between the original vs the remixes, and if you can find it, the original is to be preferred. There is in fact no definitive Exposure according to Fripps original intention but we mere mortals will have to deal with His Frippnesses dissatisfaction.
We begin the Preface, with Eno talking about some music he wants to play to Fripp, merging into a lush a capella chorus and a snippet of Peter Gabriel on a take of Here Comes The Flood cut to a telephone ringing and someone going to it and picking it up. We can hear the tinny beginnings of You Burn Me Up (I'm A Cigarette) down the phone and the full song then bursts out, a typical '70's Eno rock stomper sung by Daryl Hall.
Next is the stunning Breathless, with Tony Leven and Narada Michael Walden. It is simply mad, the guitar is playing in 9/8, and the rhythm section alternates between 5/8, 6/8 and 7/8. Must be played very loud and growling along with the bass is to be encouraged. I have been caught in enthusiastic mid-growl more than once, I'm afraid. It tails off into a frippertronic guitar over a difficult to distinguish conversation with none other than Robert's mum, Edith, apparently about his toilet training (no, I'm not kidding). We segue into Disengage, Peter Hammill's first vocal performance (or rather scat shriek) of Walton's lyric about the frighteningly severe Mrs Marion:
She decodes my secrets my fragments
I'd create any betrayal for their sake
She asks me to wait in the hallway
Where I'm doing my best not to shake
The gentle North Star, sung by Daryl Hall, is frankly the best thing Hall's done in or outside Hall&Oates, sliding over chiming and eerie guitar effects and sharply contrasts with Chicago, another Walton love lyric, an oddly menacing and desperate shuffle over wailing guitars. Evidently to wake us up, NY3 recalls the odd signatures of Breathless beneath a taped argument somewhere in New York:
Your house
My house
Your house
My house
Well get out there's the door
Well get out there's the door
It's another furious musical tirade and is all too briefly over before Mary, another gentle ballad wafts by.
Exposure begins the LP's side two by reminding us that it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering and Terre Roche sings and eventually screams exposure while Eno pitilessly spells it out beneath a leering rhythm and fluid Frippertronics.
Haaden Two is the "incredibly dismal pathetic chord sequence" that underpins some some odd quotes (including a backwards Monty Python quote), and the remix versions unfortunately leave off the more entertaining quotes at the end. Urban Landscape abruptly lands us in Ambient Country for a while, to be eventually rescued by the fusion scat I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough Of You, which has Hammill and Roche duetting variations on "that is the way it is".
First Inaugural Address To The I.A.C.E. Sherbourne House purports to be a highly compressed version of the entire speech by J.G. Bennett. Who knows? I haven't tried to decipher it. Water Music I, another ambient piece concerning a future Ice Age, segues into Peter Gabriel's Here Comes The Flood, a simple piece, mainly on piano, and later versions don't match it in my opinion. Water Music II returns to ambience, and we're left with the rather odd Postscript, another Eno remark that repeats from the telephone, which is now replaced and the listener walks out the door.
I told you it was an odd album :) It obviously suffered from the missing songs originally intended to be Daryl Hall's contributions but which his record company refused permission to include, hence the sudden ambience of the original side two. Otherwise it's an unusually accessible (relatively speaking) collection of love songs spiced with forbidding future Crimson. Seen that way, it isn't that difficult an album to appreciate, but there are still issues of production that probably reflect the chaos of its creation. It's no doubt why Fripp sought to remix it at least twice, and although that resulted in some cleanup, the basic tracks still lack a clarity of sound. Flawed, but still worthy. Try and grab a copy from somewhere, it's worth the challenge to your ears.
And dislike people?
This is no obstacle to work.
-- J. G. Bennett, in Haaden Two
This album is way, way off the beaten track. The enigmatic Fripp, leader of the brilliant King Crimson collective, put this together in 1979 during one of his sabbaticals from Crimson, and was intended to be part of a trilogy of work in collaboration with Peter Gabriel and Daryl Hall (yes that Daryl Hall). The trilogy didn't come off (see Claas Kazzer's brilliant backgrounder (http://www.elephant-talk.com/exposure/expoweb1.htm)), but collaboration there was aplenty on Exposure, including Barry Andrews (of XTC and later Shriekback), Tony Levin, Phil Collins and Jerry Marotta. It's an important album because it's the first major work Fripp did with Levin prior to the reformation of Crimson, and some of the tracks very definitely point towards the new direction Crimson was to take. It is also extremely personal (most lyrics are by his lover of the time Joanna Walton), and for a solo album, extremely generous to both Daryl Hall and Peter Gabriel (who got to perform his own song on someone else's solo album!).
Frippertronics are Fripps word for his tape-loop electronic treatments of his guitar work, no doubt a steal from Eno, but a good steal that noone grudges, and it's easier to use the word to describe how Fripp built up a aural background to the album's tracks. In a sense he marries ambient guitar loops with intricate rhythms and the groundwork for the next 20 years was laid down in these sessions.
That doesn't alter the fact that it's obscure and uneven to the newcomer. Songs are linked by taped conversations and quotes from J. G. Bennett, whose philosophy was very important to Fripp at the time. According to Fripp it was intended as both a deliberate setting for the album's personal explorations and an attempt to make the album an ambient environment in its own right, so it is rightly a concept album, except the average listener would be totally unaware of this :)
A final note before I begin the blow-by-blow: the version of the album I mention here is known as the Definitive Edition (or DE) mix. There have been three from the 1979 LP (which I own), a 1985 remix and the DE reissue on CD in 1990. There are some differences, mainly between the original vs the remixes, and if you can find it, the original is to be preferred. There is in fact no definitive Exposure according to Fripps original intention but we mere mortals will have to deal with His Frippnesses dissatisfaction.
We begin the Preface, with Eno talking about some music he wants to play to Fripp, merging into a lush a capella chorus and a snippet of Peter Gabriel on a take of Here Comes The Flood cut to a telephone ringing and someone going to it and picking it up. We can hear the tinny beginnings of You Burn Me Up (I'm A Cigarette) down the phone and the full song then bursts out, a typical '70's Eno rock stomper sung by Daryl Hall.
Next is the stunning Breathless, with Tony Leven and Narada Michael Walden. It is simply mad, the guitar is playing in 9/8, and the rhythm section alternates between 5/8, 6/8 and 7/8. Must be played very loud and growling along with the bass is to be encouraged. I have been caught in enthusiastic mid-growl more than once, I'm afraid. It tails off into a frippertronic guitar over a difficult to distinguish conversation with none other than Robert's mum, Edith, apparently about his toilet training (no, I'm not kidding). We segue into Disengage, Peter Hammill's first vocal performance (or rather scat shriek) of Walton's lyric about the frighteningly severe Mrs Marion:
She decodes my secrets my fragments
I'd create any betrayal for their sake
She asks me to wait in the hallway
Where I'm doing my best not to shake
The gentle North Star, sung by Daryl Hall, is frankly the best thing Hall's done in or outside Hall&Oates, sliding over chiming and eerie guitar effects and sharply contrasts with Chicago, another Walton love lyric, an oddly menacing and desperate shuffle over wailing guitars. Evidently to wake us up, NY3 recalls the odd signatures of Breathless beneath a taped argument somewhere in New York:
Your house
My house
Your house
My house
Well get out there's the door
Well get out there's the door
It's another furious musical tirade and is all too briefly over before Mary, another gentle ballad wafts by.
Exposure begins the LP's side two by reminding us that it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering and Terre Roche sings and eventually screams exposure while Eno pitilessly spells it out beneath a leering rhythm and fluid Frippertronics.
Haaden Two is the "incredibly dismal pathetic chord sequence" that underpins some some odd quotes (including a backwards Monty Python quote), and the remix versions unfortunately leave off the more entertaining quotes at the end. Urban Landscape abruptly lands us in Ambient Country for a while, to be eventually rescued by the fusion scat I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough Of You, which has Hammill and Roche duetting variations on "that is the way it is".
First Inaugural Address To The I.A.C.E. Sherbourne House purports to be a highly compressed version of the entire speech by J.G. Bennett. Who knows? I haven't tried to decipher it. Water Music I, another ambient piece concerning a future Ice Age, segues into Peter Gabriel's Here Comes The Flood, a simple piece, mainly on piano, and later versions don't match it in my opinion. Water Music II returns to ambience, and we're left with the rather odd Postscript, another Eno remark that repeats from the telephone, which is now replaced and the listener walks out the door.
I told you it was an odd album :) It obviously suffered from the missing songs originally intended to be Daryl Hall's contributions but which his record company refused permission to include, hence the sudden ambience of the original side two. Otherwise it's an unusually accessible (relatively speaking) collection of love songs spiced with forbidding future Crimson. Seen that way, it isn't that difficult an album to appreciate, but there are still issues of production that probably reflect the chaos of its creation. It's no doubt why Fripp sought to remix it at least twice, and although that resulted in some cleanup, the basic tracks still lack a clarity of sound. Flawed, but still worthy. Try and grab a copy from somewhere, it's worth the challenge to your ears.