Franco Battiato
L'Arca di Noè

THE REVIEW

Battiato, as we approach 1982, is already a well-established, celebrated artist: his previous work, "La voce del padrone," already holds enviable sales records - it will be the first Italian record to surpass a million copies sold, surpassing even Mina, Battisti, and many other legendary figures - and it's no coincidence that curiously complex horizons now loom for the Sicilian composer, not yet "lost horizons" like those in the eponymous album a year later, but rather the more problematic horizons of no return, the surpassed yet still dear horizons of electronic experimentation of the 1970s production, the esoteric Gurdjieff-like horizons of "Le roi du monde," the satirical horizons of "Up patriots to arms": fascinating hypotheses, much like the fascinating possibility that the Sicilian singer-songwriter might reconfirm the learned commercial appeal of undisputed success like the previous one. However, the impression is that, both due to the uniqueness of a work like "La voce del padrone" and especially because of a need for musical renewal to which Battiato has never shied away, anything can be expected, and the commercial touch that Franco has accustomed fans of less discerning tastes might be partially disavowed.

This is how the Ark is born, the one par excellence, a golden transit and transition record that more than any other is suspended between past, present, and future, a brief insertion that speaks of omens and impressions, a shining haiku: the spontaneity of the human journey, which makes a "stopover in Grado," before passing through Harlem or the streets of Warsaw, is here not an act of presence, but a cornerstone of the Battiato doctrine; the continuation of the "Endless Journey" passes with consistent screeching through the unsettling primordial noise of "L'esodo," where the initial awkward choir in Latin and German appears as an apocalyptic Tower of Babel that is a portent of an end, perhaps of regeneration, perhaps even renewal.
"Moltitudine moltitudine," a phrase with a refined and equally resonant taste, as proof of the precious fusion between refined and commercial that distinguishes much of Battiato's production, is the omen: "L'esodo" is about to be completed, and amid "Clamori" and "New frontiers," the challenge to the new era - chronological? - presses on. "Scalo a Grado," an insert of implosive power, preludes to the "Tower" from which to throw the contenders to force natural selection for the Ark, eventually flowing into the most beautiful of eighteenth-century paintings that is "Voglio vederti danzare," where the image of " couples of elderly dancing old Viennese waltzes," seems to give the anxieties of the album an imprint of redemption entrusted to reminiscence.

Year 1982, a new challenge for Franco Battiato... the "Orizzonti perduti" await.