Franco Battiato
Caffè De La Paix

"Caffè de la Paix", dated 1993, represents one of the most intimate and introspective works in Battiato's discography, and in my opinion, one of his best works.

This album seems to me very much like a journey, where the artist takes the listener by the hand and gently but confidently guides them, supported by the certainty that true peace is found only in the continuous and essential search for oneself, and in the inevitable but serene acceptance that such investigation leads to the unknowability of the mystery that each of us is deep within. A search that is, in Battiato's philosophy, a journey backwards, a return to the origins, to that golden age when man lived on a higher plane, free from the chains of passions and the corruption of materiality, in the world described in the track “Sui Giardini della Preesistenza”; a journey that cannot be disconnected, moreover, from the ruin, the loss of that world, due to the (dis)human lust for power, luxury, and wealth (“Delenda Carthago”), from its imploding as in the paradigmatic end of the submerged kingdom, in “Atlantide”. A return back in time which, in reality, is nothing more than a journey within ourselves, in our previous lives. And indeed, the cyclicity of earthly lives, the transmigration of the soul, the attempt to reconstruct one's own karmic path, are all themes dear to the author, which are found not only in the track that gives the title to this album but also, for example, in the future “Vite Parallele” and in the beautiful “Il Mantello e la Spiga” (both from "Gommalacca").

Journey through time, therefore, but also a journey through space, metaphysical space, in that Mesopotamia already celebrated by our artist which was the cradle of humanity, and which shines with its precious colors and flavors and aromas in the Iraqi song “Fogh in Nakhal” and in the Persian finale of “Haiku”.

All inclusive: the tour operator Franco(Rosso)Battiato also provides us with the means of transport to embark on this spiritual journey: meditation (meditate people, meditate!), a privileged instrument of liberation from daily worries, to arrive at the discovery of what finally really counts, the essence, through detachment from one's sensations and emotions (the Buddhist mental silence, one might say: “…my mind, which often chains me to its thoughts”, he sings in “Ricerca sul Terzo”, and “I would like to suspend myself in nothingness, reduce myself and become nothing” in the already mentioned “Haiku”).

The music masterfully accompanies this journey: the album is infused with Middle Eastern sounds (once again the valley between the two rivers), thanks to the use of ethnic instruments; the music is sublime and gentle in the memory of the mythical world, in “Sui Giardini della Preesistenza”; solemn and dramatic in describing its end, in “Atlantide” and “Delenda Carthago”; repetitive and hypnotic in "Ricerca sul Terzo” and “Haiku”. A special mention goes to “Lode all’ Inviolato”, the most beautiful song on the album and one of my all-time favorites by Battiato. In this track, there is the essence of the entire album: the certainty of a transcendent Presence, however you want to call it (and I really like Guardian), neither distant nor indifferent; the deceptions, the false self-images behind which we hide, from others but first of all from ourselves; the uncertainties and the falls; the joy of being self-aware, and conscious of one's own consciousness; the inviolability that descends from it, the one that makes you believe that, no matter how dark and rain-loaded, “the clouds cannot annihilate the sun”.

In short, one of Battiato's works that I prefer, even though it is so far away, or perhaps precisely because it is so far from me, unbelieving, troubled, and, alas, very violable.

P.S.: I am aware that there is already an anti-review of this album. Therefore, I apologize, first and foremost to the Author, for the duplicate. I can only say that I have tried, by giving my personal interpretation, to make it as little as possible (a duplicate).