Exit (Alice album)
Encyclopedia
Exit is the fourteenth studio album by Italian
singer-songwriter
Alice
, released in 1998 on WEA/Warner Music.
After the musically experimental and lyrically introspective albums Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi
(1992) and Charade
(1995) Alice released Exit in 1998, her most pop-oriented and melodic studio album since the late 1980s. As Allmusic wrote in their review: "the album often suggests Sarah McLachlan
in a duet with Enigma
".
The lead single "I Am a Taxi" was a lyrically minimalistic up-tempo dance groove with influences from contemporary R&B
and electronica
, and the single included further dancefloor friendly remixes. The second single release, "Open Your Eyes", was an English/Italian language duet with Skye Edwards
, lead singer of British electronica
and trip-hop band Morcheeba
, recorded shortly after the release of their 1998 album Big Calm
(#18 UK). "Open Your Eyes" was co-written by Alice, producer Francesco Messina, singer-songwriter Juri Camisasca and Peter Hammill
of Van der Graaf Generator
and was again one of the most accessible and chart-oriented tracks the singer had recorded since Il Sole Nella Pioggia
. The promo video showed the two singers performing the song sitting in a rowing boat on a sunny summer's day in London's Hyde Park. Third single "Dimmi Di Sì" ("Tell Me Yes") was a midtempo ballad which juxtaposed subtle club beats and ambient keyboard effects against acoustic guitars. Exit also included a second duet between Alice and Italian alternative rock
band Bluvertigo
's Morgan, "L'immagine" ("The Images"), and the two were to duet again on both Personal Jukebox
in 2000 and Viaggio in Italia in 2003. The one minute eighteen seconds "Il cielo sopra il cielo" was an excerpt from the ambient/crossover group project Devogue's eponymous 1997 debut album, a forty-five minute sound collage
which had featured vocals by Alice on five of the thirteen titles.
The acoustic track "1943", written by Alice's longtime collaborator Mino di Martino, and lyrically influenced by the works of German
poet
and playwright
Else Lasker-Schüler
, draws parallels between the horrors of the Holocaust and the at the time on-going war in The Balkans, and its so called ethnic cleansing
. When playing the song live on the following Exit tour Alice specifically urged her audiences to donate money to organisations helping refugees from the former Yugoslavia
coming to Italy. She later also performed the song in Italian manifestations against the Iraq War.
Exit closes with a cover version of French poet, composer, singer and musician Léo Ferré
's "L'Étranger" ("The Stranger"), a poem by Charles Baudelaire
set to music by Ferré and first released on his 1967 album Léo Ferré Chante Baudelaire.
Both the "I Am A Taxi" and "Open Your Eyes" singles included the non-album track "Da Lontano".
Both "Open Your Eyes" and "Dimmi Di Sì" were later included in the 2000 career retrospective Personal Jukebox
.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
Alice
Alice (Italian singer)
Alice , also known as Alice Visconti is an Italian singer-songwriter and pianist, active since 1971...
, released in 1998 on WEA/Warner Music.
After the musically experimental and lyrically introspective albums Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi
Mezzogiorno Sulle Alpi
Mezzogiorno sulle Alpi is the twelfth studio album by Italian singer-songwriter Alice, released in 1992 on EMI Music.Three years after the commercial success of Il sole nella pioggia Alice returned to the music scene with her most mature and complex work to date, exploring genres like experimental...
(1992) and Charade
Charade (Alice album)
Charade is the thirteenth studio album by Italian singer-songwriter Alice, released in late 1995 on WEA/Warner Music.After a three year long artistic and legal dispute with her label EMI Music Alice signed with WEA in 1995 and then released her first studio album since 1992's Mezzogiorno sulle...
(1995) Alice released Exit in 1998, her most pop-oriented and melodic studio album since the late 1980s. As Allmusic wrote in their review: "the album often suggests Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan, OC, OBC is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter. Known for her emotional ballads and mezzo-soprano vocal range, as of 2006, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards and four...
in a duet with Enigma
Enigma (musical project)
Enigma is an electronic musical project founded in Germany by Michael Cretu, David Fairstein and Frank Peterson in 1990. The Romanian-born Cretu conceived the Enigma project while working in Germany, but has based his recording studio A.R.T. Studios in Ibiza, Spain, since the early 1990s until May...
".
The lead single "I Am a Taxi" was a lyrically minimalistic up-tempo dance groove with influences from contemporary R&B
Contemporary R&B
Contemporary R&B is a music genre that combines elements of hip hop, soul, R&B and funk.Although the abbreviation “R&B” originates from traditional rhythm and blues music, today the term R&B is most often used to describe a style of African American music originating after the demise of disco in...
and electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, and the single included further dancefloor friendly remixes. The second single release, "Open Your Eyes", was an English/Italian language duet with Skye Edwards
Skye Edwards
Skye Edwards is a British singer-songwriter, born in East London. Her career began in 1994 when she and the Godfrey brothers formed the band Morcheeba, which released five albums with Skye as lead vocalist...
, lead singer of British electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
and trip-hop band Morcheeba
Morcheeba
Morcheeba are a British band, mixing influences from trip hop, rock, R&B, and pop.They have produced 7 albums since 1995, two of which reached the UK top ten.-Biography:...
, recorded shortly after the release of their 1998 album Big Calm
Big Calm
Big Calm is the second album by Morcheeba. "The Music That We Hear", included on special-edition versions of the album, is a reworking of "Moog Island" from Morcheeba's first album, Who Can You Trust?.-Track listing:...
(#18 UK). "Open Your Eyes" was co-written by Alice, producer Francesco Messina, singer-songwriter Juri Camisasca and Peter Hammill
Peter Hammill
Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill is an English singer-songwriter, and a founding member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Most noted for his vocal abilities, his main instruments are guitar and piano...
of Van der Graaf Generator
Van der Graaf Generator
Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester. They were the first act signed to Charisma Records. The band achieved considerable success in Italy during the 1970s...
and was again one of the most accessible and chart-oriented tracks the singer had recorded since Il Sole Nella Pioggia
Il Sole Nella Pioggia
Il sole nella pioggia is the eleventh studio album by Italian singer-songwriter Alice, released in 1989 on EMI Music.The album, whose title translates as The Sun in the Rain, includes the single releases "Visioni" and "Il sole nella pioggia" as well as popular tracks like "Tempo senza tempo", "Le...
. The promo video showed the two singers performing the song sitting in a rowing boat on a sunny summer's day in London's Hyde Park. Third single "Dimmi Di Sì" ("Tell Me Yes") was a midtempo ballad which juxtaposed subtle club beats and ambient keyboard effects against acoustic guitars. Exit also included a second duet between Alice and Italian alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Bluvertigo
Bluvertigo
Bluvertigo is an Italian band formed in 1992. Their first name was "Golden Age" and former members are Morgan , Andy and Marco Pancaldi...
's Morgan, "L'immagine" ("The Images"), and the two were to duet again on both Personal Jukebox
Personal Jukebox (Alice album)
Personal Jukebox is a compilation album by Italian singer-songwriter Alice, released in 2000 on WEA/Warner Music.In the Spring of 2000 Alice returned to the Sanremo music festival, nineteen years after the victory with "Per Elisa"...
in 2000 and Viaggio in Italia in 2003. The one minute eighteen seconds "Il cielo sopra il cielo" was an excerpt from the ambient/crossover group project Devogue's eponymous 1997 debut album, a forty-five minute sound collage
Sound collage
In music, montage or sound collage is a technique where sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage, the use of portions of previous recordings or scores...
which had featured vocals by Alice on five of the thirteen titles.
The acoustic track "1943", written by Alice's longtime collaborator Mino di Martino, and lyrically influenced by the works of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Else Lasker-Schüler
Else Lasker-Schüler
Else Lasker-Schüler was a Jewish German poet and playwright famous for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.-Biography:Schüler was born in...
, draws parallels between the horrors of the Holocaust and the at the time on-going war in The Balkans, and its so called ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
. When playing the song live on the following Exit tour Alice specifically urged her audiences to donate money to organisations helping refugees from the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
coming to Italy. She later also performed the song in Italian manifestations against the Iraq War.
Exit closes with a cover version of French poet, composer, singer and musician Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...
's "L'Étranger" ("The Stranger"), a poem by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
set to music by Ferré and first released on his 1967 album Léo Ferré Chante Baudelaire.
Both the "I Am A Taxi" and "Open Your Eyes" singles included the non-album track "Da Lontano".
Both "Open Your Eyes" and "Dimmi Di Sì" were later included in the 2000 career retrospective Personal Jukebox
Personal Jukebox
The Personal Jukebox was the first commercially sold hard disk digital audio player. Introduced late in 1999, it preceded the Apple iPod and similar players. The original design was developed by Compaq Research starting in May 1998...
.
Track listing
- "Dimmi di sì" (AliceAlice (Italian singer)Alice , also known as Alice Visconti is an Italian singer-songwriter and pianist, active since 1971...
) - 4:13 - "Open Your Eyes" (duet with SkyeSkye EdwardsSkye Edwards is a British singer-songwriter, born in East London. Her career began in 1994 when she and the Godfrey brothers formed the band Morcheeba, which released five albums with Skye as lead vocalist...
of MorcheebaMorcheebaMorcheeba are a British band, mixing influences from trip hop, rock, R&B, and pop.They have produced 7 albums since 1995, two of which reached the UK top ten.-Biography:...
) (Juri Camisasca, Peter HammillPeter HammillPeter Joseph Andrew Hammill is an English singer-songwriter, and a founding member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Most noted for his vocal abilities, his main instruments are guitar and piano...
, Alice, Francesco Messina) - 4:08 - "Il vento soltanto" (Alice, Osvaldo Coluccino) - 3:25
- "L'immagine" (duet with Morgan) (Luca Urbani, Marco "Morgan" CastoldiBluvertigoBluvertigo is an Italian band formed in 1992. Their first name was "Golden Age" and former members are Morgan , Andy and Marco Pancaldi...
, Francesco Messina) - 3:43 - "Exit" (Alice, Osvaldo Coluccino) - 4:26
- "Isole" (Lorenzo Amato, Vincenzo Zitello) - 3:45
- "Il contatto" (Alice) - 3:45
- "Il cielo sopra il cielo" (Francesco Messina, Mino Di Martino) - 1:18
- "I Am a Taxi" (Francesco Messina, Alice) - 4:29
- "1943" (Mino Di Martino) - 3:33
- "Transito" (Mino Di Martino, Francesco Messina) - 4:21
- "Lo specchio" (Francesco Messina, Alice) - 1:58
- "L'Étranger" (Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Léo FerréLéo FerréLéo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...
) - 3:07
Personnel
- Alice - lead vocals, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
trks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 12 - Marco "Morgan" Castoldi - vocals & electric bassElectric BassElectric bass can mean:*Electric upright bass, the electric version of a double bass*Electric bass guitar*Bass synthesizer*Big Mouth Billy Bass, a battery-powered singing fish...
trk 4 - Andrea Cernecca - celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
trk 13 - Osvaldo Coluccino - vocals trk 5
- Simone D'Eusanio - electric violinElectric violinAn electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument purposely made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body...
trk 6, 7 & 11 - Skye Edwards - vocals trk 2
- Michele Fedrigotti - stringString instrumentA string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
arrangements trk 6 - Marco Guarnerio - acoustic guitarAcoustic guitarAn acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
trks 3-5, electric guitarElectric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
trks 9 & 11, additional keyboards trks 1, 3, 5, 6 & 11, Hammond organHammond organThe Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
trk 11, synth bass trks 1, 3, 5 & 9 - Francesco Messina - synthesizerSynthesizerA synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
s, samplersSampler (musical instrument)A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
trks 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 13, synth "guitar" trks 1 & 3, beats trks 11 & 12 - Pino Pinaxa Pischetola - rhythm constructions trks 1-5, 7, 9 & 13
- Bruno Romani - fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
trk 13, saxophoneSaxophoneThe saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
trk 6 - Mauro Spina - synth bass trk 2, wave drum trks 7 & 13
- Luca Urbani - vocals trk 4
- Vincenzo Zitello - celtic harp trk 6
Production
- Francesco Messina - record producerRecord producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, sounds programming - Pino Pinaxa Pischetola - computer programming + processing, sound engineer, Stonehenge Studio
- Marco Guarnerio - computer programming + processing, sound engineer, Didde Studio
- Mixed by Pino Pinaxa Pischetola, Stonehenge Studio, MilanMilanMilan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
- Antonio Baglio - Mastering at Nautilus
- Polystudio - cover designDesignDesign as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
- Gianfranco Casula - Mac artworkCover artCover art is the illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book , magazine, comic book, video game , DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. The art has a primarily commercial function, i.e...
- Sheila Rock - photographyPhotographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
(Alice, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
) - Alessandro Paderni - photography, (other photos, Milan) Altre foto: Milano
- Una Sas, Bologna - executive producers
- Paolo Santoli, Musica Srl, Bologna - managementManagementManagement in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...