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Robert Fripp – Exposure / Washington Square Church

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What does it sound like?:

Exposure, reissued here as a cd plus audio dvd set, is one of Robert Fripp’s best and certainly most accessible albums, featuring collaborations with a number of artists, including Peter Gabriel, Eno, Peter Hammill and, perhaps rather surprisingly, Daryl Hall. The original 1979 album appears as Edition 4, and has been newly remixed to fine effect by Steven Wilson, while the dvd additionally features the 2005 version (Edition 3), plus the album in its originally intended iteration (Last of the Great New York Heartthrobs). Originally conceived as one of a trio of albums planned to be released simultaneously, along with Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel’s second effort (both produced by Fripp), the album presents the artist in a very different light to his last sighting in King Crimson in 1974, the music being a mixture of mainly short songs, instrumentals and sound collages, featuring a variety of different vocalists along the way. The move to New York in the latter part of the seventies seemingly galvanised and inspired Fripp, influencing the sounds he created and at the same time reinvigorating his creative palette, both in the way he worked and in the opportunities the city’s thriving and newly buoyant music scene created to collaborate with new artists. Highlights for me are the title track plus the new version of Here Comes The Flood, but overall this has to be one the best ever debut solo albums, one that still stands apart from the pack – it’s really withstood the test of time with its power and vitality, and if you’ve never heard it then this is a great opportunity to put that right.

Washington Square Church, another cd and audio dvd package, is a collection of live recordings made in the New York church of the title in July and August of 1981.This is a prime example of the Frippertronics technique of creating pieces from tape loops overlaid with his guitar, slowly building the music from the ground upwards. There are certainly some fine early examples of this method here, with the mesmerising loops overlaid with powerful yet strangely beautiful guitar solos. It’s hard to believe this remarkable music was created over forty years ago as it still sounds so current, especially on the surround mixes presented on the dvd. This type of music is maybe not to everyone’s taste, but if you want an introduction to the whole Frippertronics genre, then this is perhaps one of the best and musically most accessible entry points.

What does it all *mean*?

For the superfan, there’s a huge Exposure box set available, but otherwise two more reissued titles will be arriving in July.

Goes well with…

Expecting the unexpected.

Release Date:

Out now.

Might suit people who like…

Creative collaborations and ambient spiraling soundscapes.

4

Comments

  1. Exposures (Box Set)

    Goes well with …..

    Someone with a lot of time.

    748 tracks. 127 hours 26 minutes 45 seconds (excluding multiple mixes 5.1, DTS, quad). Many “tracks” are complete concert/recitals -130+ .

    Longest box set ever?

    • I just finished ripping the set to my media server library. The two disks of Frippertronics account for 4.3 days of music! It’s difficult to associate the individual files (50 on disk 26 and 85 on disk 27) with the specific dates and locations of the performances, but if you put them in their own folder and put them on shuffle play, you easily create an ambient music library you can keep playing in the background 24/7 without ever noticing repeats. It’s like getting 120 more albums like No Pussyfooting or Evening Star all in one fell swoop. Even though the Frippertronics performances come from live concerts, there is no audience sound. They are all taken off the main mixing board. Great sound too. Fripp is very imaginative in how he sculpts the loops. They’re constantly changing and he plays lines over the top of them so they don’t get boring or repetitive, even though the concept of creating them is the same. I’d say that the two Frippertronics blu-rays are the real reason to get this set.

  3. Yes yes yes… I have the big box (which luckily didn’t arrive together with the glorious Horslips box!).
    Who in their right mind could resist 89 hours of Frippertronics?

    And although it doesn’t contain everything from the time (the League Of Gentlemen album is missing) there’s enough bits an pieces to keep me occupied for a couple of months. The three main albums (»Exposure« | »Discotronics« | »Frippertronics«) are great New Wave/Post Rock stuff, and all the remaining sideways and back alleys lead straight to »Discipline«-era Crimson.

    • Thanks Fatima – I’ve got a birthday coming up: if they all give me cash, I’ll be well on the way to buying this.

      Based on the KC boxes, I imagine there’s plenty of reading material?

    • There appear to be a few League Of Gentlemen live albums, as well as the studio album.
      I only knew about that one and “Thrang Thrang Gozinbulx” until I had a look on Discogs.com just now.
      Perhaps a League Of Gentlemen Box is somewhere in the pipeline, awaiting it’s time to emerge.

    • I’m confused – is the League of Gentlemen album not on CD 18 (1985 CD mix) and CD 19 (2021 mix)? Looking at track list on Discogs – am I missing something that everyone else is seeing?

      • The vinyl version of the League Of Gentlemen album was completely different. The CD used different takes of some of the tracks, and everything was heavily overdubbed and remixed. Fripp obviously prefers this reworked version, but they could have included the original amongst all the archive stuff on one of the BluRays (there are nearly a dozen different versions of the »Exposure« album in the box!).

  5. Bought the LOG album on vinyl when it came out and saw the band at Manchester’s Factory/Russell Club around the same time (the gigs are listed on the back cover if anyone is really interested).

    Unlike Exposure, another recovered delight from my restored album collection, the years have not been kind to the LOG’s sole album, IMHO

    • The live “official bootleg” from 1996 gives a much better retrospective flavour of them than the studio effort, though the audio quality isn’t great.

    • oh, I’m rather fond of it, though I do recall it driving one housemate berserk, long before aforementioned years took their toll.

      But echoing comments above, Exposure, title track’n’all, and Here Comes the Flood are superb.

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