In 1979, British guitarist Robert Fripp released his first solo album, Exposure. Its aim was to “investigate the ‘pop song’ as a means of expression,” and it featured contributions from the likes of Darryl Hall, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, and Brian Eno.
But when it came time to promote the record, Fripp didn’t tour with a band. Instead, he improvised solo sets of frippertronics — a technique developed with Brian Eno of feeding his guitar into two reel-to-reel tape machines that loop and decay the sound in real time. As Fripp quickly moved onto other projects like restarting his band King Crimson, most songs from Exposure were never performed live.
Until this week.
Fripp Before and After
Just five years earlier, King Crimson looked poised for cross-continental success. Some pundits claimed they blew main acts like The Kinks off the stage during their USA tour. Red, their jazzy 1974 proto-grunge album, would go on to influence generations of hard rock musicians — it was even reportedly found in Kurt Cobain’s car deck after his death.
Bandmates saw a chart-topping breakthrough on the horizon, but Fripp saw an exit sign. He left the music business entirely for nearly three years, enrolling in the International Academy for Continuous Education at the Sherborne House in Gloucestershire, a personal growth bootcamp where he spent his days digging ditches, roller skating in living rooms, and learning mystical philosophy.
Fripp re-emerged from Sherborne into a radically different chapter of his career. After contributing to David Bowie’s Heroes album, he relocated to the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, absorbing the grime while immersing himself in the punk rock scene that had pushed out his long-winded progressive rock peers by the late 70s.
He got busy producing and contributing to albums for Blondie, The Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Daryl Hall, and The Roches. Many of these sessions shared personnel and recording space with the Exposure album he was also assembling.
The Making of Exposure
Exposure wasn’t supposed to be a solo project. Fripp and close friend Daryl Hall (of Hall & Oates) recorded a collaborative album called Last of the Great NYC Heartthrobs, but Hall’s management feared the music’s experimental nature would tarnish his brand. Back to the drawing board, Fripp recruited Peter Hammill and Terre Roche to replace Hall’s vocals on all but two songs.
With lyrics written by Fripp’s partner at the time Joanna Walton, Exposure benefits from the broader palette of singing styles. Hall handles the smoother numbers, Hammill’s operatic intensity elevates the hard rockers, and Roche provides everything from earthy folk twang to nails-on-chalkboard shrieking. This kaleidoscopic record dresses up Fripp’s odd scales and time signatures in street punk aggression and quirky pop tenderness. Fripp trades the searing solos of his Crimson days for jagged rhythmic work and ambient frippertronics textures. The latter give the album an airiness that offsets the grittiness of the rhythm section.
While King Crimson till that point had been all British, the mean streets of New York permeate Exposure. Fripp’s field recordings from his time in Hell’s Kitchen enhance the urban atmosphere. “NY3” is a Mahavishnu Orchestra-like gallop structured around a surreptitious recording of his neighbors, a father and daughter shouting things like “it is not your house!” and “you’re a cocaine sniffer!” at each other.
2025 Revival
Just last week I caught word that a group was performing this overlooked record in its entirety at NYC’s City Winery, alongside the Hudson River blocks away from the original recording location.
Blessed by Fripp, the Exposure Band includes Terre Roche who sang on the original album, 30-year King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, his wife and collaborator Deborah on vocals and percussion, bassist Don Box (who also transcribed and arranged the music), Crafty Guitarists Steve Ball and Fernando Kabusake, pianist Garry Dial, percussionist Marlon Cherry, and backup singers Lisa and Lori Brigantino.
To fully recreate the album, Don Box cued Fripp’s recordings, which serve as intros, outros and interludes, from a tablet screen. After the opening minute of footsteps, conversations, and ringing telephones, a piano glissando kicked off “You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette.” A bit tentative out the gate, this old school rockabilly tune which sounds like it came from same jukebox as “Great Balls of Fire” was Deb Mastelotto’s only lead vocal.
Fripp himself once said “expectation is a prison.” The line echoed in my mind as execution sometimes fell short of anticipation.
Terre Roche has a comfortable stage presence, but her voice has lost much of its tone and range over the years. And the changes were on extra-prominent display as she sang the lion’s share of songs.
Peter Hammil’s hair-raising bellows on “Disengage” turned a punk rock experiment into a snarling rejection of authority on the album, matched by Fripp’s brass-knuckle guitar chords and Phil Collins’s (yes, that Phil Collins) driving beat. I was particularly excited to hear this thrasher live, but as soon as they reached the verse the band dropped to a hush, draining the song’s vitality and leaving Roche’s flat delivery… exposed.
Roche’s most effective performance was the title track of Exposure, where she screams the word “exposure” at increasing levels of intensity. Appropriately, she dialed down the abrasiveness to include more alto as a trio of backing singers slowly chanted each letter of the word over a funky bassline and a recorded British male voice repeated “it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering.”
The singing can’t be blamed for all the evening’s flaws. The guitarists had some inevitable false starts and miscues while getting songs off the ground.
Instrumentals like “NY3” or the smouldering “Breathless” brought out the best in the band. Pat Mastelotto, a deeply inventive drummer who relies more on resourcefulness and power than speed, confidently led the latter with a Crimson-esque 7/4 groove and dramatic cymbal crashes. The frippertronics which tinkle over every song were mostly sampled from the same tablet as the field recordings instead of reproduced live, allowing Fripp’s playing to still be part of the performance.
The album’s closing song, “Here Comes the Flood”, was originally a tender Peter Gabriel piano ballad accompanied by shimmering frippertronics. The somber gravitas was still there, but Roche and the piano struggled to stay in the same key during the chorus.
After finishing the album and thanking the diehard crowd, the band pivoted to material suited to the performers: a medley of Fripp-produced music from the same time period including songs by The Roches, Peter Gabriel’s “Mother of Violence,” and Crimson’s glowering classic “Red.”
Despite the roughness around the edges, it was an exclusive treat to hear the fruit of one of Fripp’s most creatively fertile periods brought to life on stage.
Given the age and obscurity of Exposure, the concert felt like an inside joke that the band and audience waited forty-six years to share. Knowing laughter echoed on and off stage when the recording of a colleague’s dismissive feedback appeared towards the end of the album: “Very very impressive […] But it just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon it!”
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