Franco Battiato
Sulle corde di Aries

Sulle Corde Di Aries, Franco Battiato 1973

Franco Battiato is a controversial artist in many respects, accused of complete musical incapacity and of false intellectualism for its own sake, but also idolized by many fans around the world with various musical orientations. His early musical period was entirely dedicated to experimentation and to a form of "Etno-progressive" that takes full shape in "Sulle Corde Di Aries".

The album opens with a long suite of impressionistic beauty: Sequenze e Frequenze. The lyrics recall Battiato's childhood (a recurring theme in his subsequent albums) with words pronounced with measured slowness, imprinting themselves vividly in the listener's mind. After the first 5 minutes, the journey begins. Pure local psychedelia.

Keyboards in full swing, classical guitar in the background and electronics, lots and lots of electronics surrounding all the wonder of this enchantment.

The keyboards strongly evoke the repetitiveness and simplicity of many New-Age compositions, but everything is animated by a vague and ever-present emotional atmosphere, crowned by the excellent performance of tenor Rosella Conz, reminiscent of the atmospheres of great, much more acclaimed English albums (Island with its Formentera Lady above all). After the first journey, the second begins.

Aries.
An instrument of wonderful beauty.

The beginning is naturally marked by many keyboards, which sweetly accompany the arrival of warm rhythms that immediately evoke exotic and sun-drenched atmospheres, or a sandstorm. But the flash that Battiato casually strikes here is another, in the sudden calm, as Gianni Mocchetti warbles sweetly on the mandolin, and here comes Gianni Bedori, diving into a wonderful sax solo of dazzling beauty that gently guides the track to its closure.
You can sense Jazz, and the air is filled with immensely open spaces, where cultures flow into one another and blend, in a wonderful musical melting pot, which Battiato would never replicate so well in a song of just 5 and a half minutes.

This is followed by the track I personally appreciate the least (but which is the only one Battiato later included in various reissues and compilations), namely Aria di Rivoluzione. The lyrics remain top-notch with a sort of narration in German of various events during World War II, overlaid by a percussive setup very similar to that of "Aries". A beautiful track nonetheless.

The album closes with the wonderful Da Oriente ad Occidente, which expands the concept expressed in Aries and musically transfigures a real journey from the Italian coasts to the East in 6 minutes of dreamlike beauty. First, a classical guitar, which is quickly replaced by the marvelous Sila Greca, giving way to Gianfranco D'Adda's percussion, and for the last 3 minutes, to typically Chinese exotic instruments, Indian percussion, and oboe, crowning the finale of one of the most beautiful Italian albums of the '70s.

Insurmountable work of art.