Franco Battiato
Battiato

LA RECENSIONE

After the challenging "M.lle Le Gladiator", which concludes the collaboration with the bold experimental label Bla Bla, Franco Battiato arrives in 1977 at Casa Ricordi, but this does not affect the musical freedom of the artist from Catania, who indeed takes the arduous research path initiated in previous records to the extreme consequences.

Proof of this is the first album recorded for the new record label, simply titled "Battiato", where the only change of course is the abandonment of electronics, in favor of classic instrumentation, with pianist Antonio Ballista and soprano Alide Maria Salvetta.

This album contains only two long compositions. The first, "Zâ", is a sound exploration based almost exclusively on the repetition of the same piano chord, with variations in duration and pauses that create resonances. A radical experimentation, perhaps exasperating in its monotony, but it may incline the ears to every vibration of Ballista's piano, according to the "meta-analytical" listening advice proposed by Battiato, both serious and humorous, in the cover notes.

The second track, "Café-Table-Musik" is certainly more enjoyable and resumes, with different means, the collage work of "Ethika fon Ethica" and "Goutez et comparez"; to the fragments of radio broadcasts (real or recreated in the studio) are replaced by warbles, improvisations, poetic declamations, sound effects, without giving up here and there on the humorous effect (a delicate romance about roses interrupted by the raucous voice of a street vendor: "oranges, sandwiches, beer!"); the obsessive electronic-organic tail of "Goutez et comparez" is replaced by enveloping piano interludes based on sequences of chords that repeat with minor variations.

In conclusion, here we find the essence of Battiato in the second half of the '70s: the attentive, rigorous, and somewhat snobbish pupil of Stockhausen, secluded at home to research sounds, and the somewhat mad and ironic experimenter, capable of fascinating you and at the same time irritating and mocking you. In any case, a musician as free and courageous as few.