Franco Battiato
Pollution

THE REVIEW

(Franco) Battiato was, despite himself, one of my childhood heroes.

The words of his songs were, for me as a child, a fantastic world of images, colors, and sensations that traveled directly to my brain from the speakers of my father's old record player. Things like “cerco un centro di gravità permanente” or “sul ponte sventola bandiera bianca” were my vehicle to escape reality and find myself in a world of imaginative and mysterious characters whose existence I was completely unaware of. I was ten years old when I got “La Voce Del Padrone” as a gift, a vinyl record I still keep with infinite jealousy. But it was later when my love for the works of the Catanese artist became boundless... when Beppe, a friend (and what a friend), recommended I listen to “Pollution”, a magnetic work from 1973... and I was astonished...! The definition found in the liner notes is: “Gesto sonoro in sette atti dedicato al Centro Internazionale Studi Magnetici” and listening to it requires almost mystical attention and dedication.

It begins with “Il Silenzio Del Rumore”, a Viennese waltz featuring a talking Battiato who, without betraying emotion, asks us “Ti sei mai chiesto quale funzione hai?” and who is torn apart by an obsessive guitar grated over an almost malevolent church organ backdrop. The second “track” (with the ominous and prophetic title of “31 dicembre 1999 – ore 9”) consists of twenty seconds of explosions and thunder echoes introducing one of the most incredible chapters of the work. “Areknames” is a mystical journey built on synthetic and analog sounds, in a whirlpool of religious sensations confused among themselves, a pilgrimage through all the world's beliefs squeezed into just over five minutes (then try reading its title backward...). “Beta” is a tribute to psychedelia, constructed with an entirely Mediterranean taste, an ethereal choir supported by a brisk, though never obsessive, drum that cradles a piano drawing magical trajectories and Battiato's monotone voice asking “Dentro di me vivono la mia identica vita dei microrganismi che non sanno di appartenere al mio corpo... io a quale corpo appartengo?”