Franco Battiato
Campi magnetici: i numeri non si possono amare

I just got into Battiato a few days ago and everything was going smoothly: La voce del padrone, Caffè de la paix, Gommalacca, L'era del cinghiale bianco, all albums between pop and wild experimentation. Up to this point, everything is fine, then I stumble upon Campi magnetici and discover that in this parallel universe, Battiato had gone crazy and released an album... which I don't even know how to describe.

Completely out of the box, packed with stuff, but really strange stuff. For example, the opening track "In trance" is a piece that starts slow, then explodes, then quiets down, and then something indescribable happens at the end. And the "lyrics" are just a few lines that complicate the piece even further: "Dormienti in stato di trance perenne
transitano naviganti che non conoscono mare chi si desta perde il clima della noncuranza." In short, chaos. And it's not alone, nonono, there are other tracks that are a complete mess: "Corpi in movimento" is the most evident example, because it starts chaotic, then calms down, then reignites, then returns calm, and then starts a part with a soprano...WHATTHEHELLISGOINGON??!!??!! But also "The age of the ermafrodites," which has a certain epicness in the first part, and "L'ignoto" are cauldrons that spill notes everywhere. Fortunately, there are calmer moments on the album like "La corrente delle stelle" and "Suoni primordiali" that restore some control with more linear structures. And after all this CHAOS of notes, voices, dog howls, box noises, meteorites, everything ends with... a piece barely three minutes long with just piano and completely in French lyrics. Well, what I just described is "La mer," a piece that almost seems to tease you: 50 minutes of pure experimentation and then at the end you find "La mer qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs a des reflets d’argent."

I recommend listening to it, especially because maybe you can understand something more because I understood little (I suggest arming yourself with a lot of patience).