Lucio Battisti
E Già

The last official image shows him alone in front of a mirror on a beach in Cornwall, with a sun reflection making it impossible to see his face. He wears a white suit, the typical scarf from many years ago; Lucio seems to have found a passage to a new perceptual plane, an advanced level of expression where few, very few, will have the patience to enter.

The preceding step is marked by "And Already", the pivotal album that turns the composer's career around, no longer the ease of "light singing," it's time to leave the Mogolian ballast to its destiny of rapid descent into more mediocre productions. Electronics is the key, the predominant synth-pop of the early '80s is the music Battisti uses to try to prove he's not a "vegetable" ("Write Your Name") clinging to the monotonous routine extensively explored to its limits on the previous album. It's time to dare and make mistakes, to irritate and shatter the desires of those who have always listened to him. It is a reclaiming of his identity as an experimenter. Played and composed in solitude on an anonymous tape handed to Greg Walsh, who would re-record it in the studio on keyboards, "And Already" is a punch to the stomach delivered to the ignorance that sees Lucio as a songwriter. Battisti is a composer open to the world, the cold and icy sounds, hypnotic and obsessive in the jarring melody are the manifesto of an artist ready to move beyond.

Words in their meaning are not needed, lyrics can be superfluous and the singing uncertain, the type "showy intellectual who deep down was worth nothing" ("Mystery") is no longer there, the word is sound.