Franco Battiato
L'Ombrello e la Macchina da Cucire

It is one of those nights when I'm alone, I don't feel like going out, and I don't invite anyone to dinner: one of those nights that mean nothing. I savor my solitude, both good and bad: at the same time, the pleasure and the burden of silence, mine and around me. I don't even go near the TV. I try to read, but no matter how good the book is (or even excellent, as in this case: Pessoa, "The Book of Disquiet by Bernardo Soares"), I find myself flipping through it without grasping the meaning of the words written there. So, I close the book and sit in front of my old stereo, choosing music to accompany this strange state of mind, which really is nothing, it's a halfway point, and it makes me look at myself as if I were looking at another, and what I see tells me nothing.

And so, tonight it's the turn of an album that is a bit like me tonight, an album that, incredibly considering the author, says nothing. Franco Battiato, "L'ombrello e la macchina da Cucire". An album of undeniable historical importance, as it is the first effort co-written by Battiato with philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, and from then on, the two would be inseparable partners: besides this, the couple has so far produced excellent works ("L'Imboscata" and the latest "X Stratagemmi"), a less successful album ("Ferro Battuto"), and a superb record ("Gommalacca").

"L'Ombrello e la Macchina da Cucire" was released in 1995, two years after the excellent "Caffè de la Paix", and in a way, it represents its nemesis. While its predecessor is a very homogeneous album in themes and atmospheres, intimate and personal, all focused on the interiority, able to reach the listener's heart (since we're talking about Battiato, obviously going through the brain and not the stomach), this work is instead absolutely heterogeneous and impersonal, a disorienting, cold album that remains distant, that you listen to but nothing sticks. There's no sense in analyzing the songs one by one: it's almost like listening to someone reading (or rather singing, as usual, excellently) an encyclopedia, and it's an utterly unengaging listen, with a plethora of references and citations from every field of human knowledge: science with the adiabatic theorem and Robert Brown's particle motions; philosophy with William of Ockham; music with Gesualdo da Venosa, Baldassarre Galuppi, Charlie Parker and his Ornithology; Enlightenment with Lessing. There are also many indirect references: T. S. Eliot, Kant, Hegel, Pascal, and the list goes on (and who knows how many I'm not able to grasp at all).

An eruption of pure knowledge: to quote a line from the title track, it brings to mind an overfilled brain that suddenly explodes, frantically splattering names, theories, and references that were accumulated there. In short, the clear impression is that this is somehow an album of manner, nothing more than a fine stylistic exercise, perfect in form, in music (mostly very close to classical), in meter; but, precisely as a pure exercise, absolutely soulless. There remains a question, indeed THE question: why? What is the point of this album? I have too much respect for Battiato's artistic and personal intelligence to believe it to be a mere slip-up, that this album was published by chance, or worse, out of urgency for sales. Nor do I think that Battiato himself considered and considers it a memorable work (evidence may be that I have never heard any of these tracks played live, neither directly nor in various live collections). After all, the subsequent "L'Imboscata", not to mention "Gommalacca", demonstrate that the Battiato-Sgalambro duo is capable of much more.

And so the inevitable conclusion is that this album is deliberately what it is, a formally impeccable nothing, and in this, it's a perfectly successful album. I dare a hypothesis: that it is the deliberately sharp sign of the end of a phase (which actually already showed signs of weakening, of self-exhaustion) in Battiato's creative and artistic journey; a slammed door, a brusque closure of a period to open another, another type of research, no longer solitary and no longer mainly interior, introspective (although, in reality, Battiato will never fully abandon this personal investigation), but more focused on the outside, on human society and the relationship between humans (and it is to this new phase that songs like "Strani giorni", "Shock in my Town", "Il Ballo del Potere", "Ermeneutica" belong).

One thing is certain: it takes courage to publish an album like this.