Alice
Capo Nord

With "Capo Nord" in 1980, the collaboration between Alice, Battiato, Pio, and Messina begins, marking the artist's production in the first half of the '80s.

The work immediately presents itself with a very particular cut that signifies a decisive shift towards modern sounds by Alice, who no longer has songs written by Califano or Pooh but is able to excel on her own, choosing, with the help of Battiato and Pio, the best way to express her worldview made of images at the margins, with strictly personal points of view that easily demolish the most banal clichés of the Italian populace, like the myth of the sun and the beach, "Lenzuoli Bianchi".

The music is heavily based on synthesized sounds, manipulated by Alice herself and in many tracks assisted by Roberto Colombo. The record is remembered for the presence of the single "Il Vento Caldo Dell'Estate", a track divided into three parts, the first distinguished by a pulsating rhythm supported by well-blended synthetic sounds, the opening of the chorus is instead entrusted to the organ introduced by the timpani, while the finale features a brief burst with more traditional instruments.
The album features very successful tracks like "Bazar", with a surreal text and ironic style that will be developed more thoroughly in the subsequent work, "Sarà" is a more traditional track that stands apart from the rest, and the text and theme are not particularly interesting, "Sera" is a track characterized by many rhyming couplets and alternations.

On the other hand, "Una Sera Di Novembre" and "Rumba Rock" are very successful, musically perfect tracks with a full integration between synthesizers and Giusto Pio's violin. A debut for EMI that is thus very interesting and promising, the cohesion within the creative group is already at a good level, perhaps the only flaw is a complex style that still needs to be developed, these are not easy and immediate songs, and it's not easy to compare this type of production with Battiato's of the period, here, there is less tendency to confine the song within a fixed scheme, instead, there is an attempt to give more freedom and space to the tracks with a pronounced use of electronics, which greatly favors Alice's beautiful voice.