Peter Gabriel by Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel's second solo album, released in 1978 on Charisma and, like his first, simply bearing his name, went into production in November 1977, the same month he came off the road from touring the debut. For the producer's chair he tapped Robert Fripp, the ex-King Crimson guitarist who had been playing in his early touring band, and they made it at The Hit Factory.

Fripp's fingerprints are all over it, nowhere more than on "Exposure", which the two wrote together and which Fripp drenches in his Frippertronics effects. This is jagged, nervy art rock with one eye on new wave, the ex-Genesis frontman keeping his songs lean and restless, and "D.I.Y." is the one the countdowns kept. Hipgnosis designed the sleeve, and its cover earned the record a nickname, Scratch, to tell it apart from Gabriel's other self-titled albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.