Franco Battiato
As a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen , Franco Battiato was enthusiastic about electronic music, and found his voice as a minimalist composer who combined avant-garde minimalism , experimental rock , and popular forms into a strange hybrid of abstract sound that touches on Kraut-like passages. Titles such as "Una Cellula," "Energia," "Fenomenologia," and "Mutazione" may indicate that this is a heavy concept album indeed, and the theme of birth and rebirth may well have been a hot topic of the time.
As a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen , Franco Battiato was enthusiastic about electronic music, and found his voice as a minimalist composer who combined avant-garde minimalism , experimental rock , and popular forms into a strange hybrid of abstract sound that touches on Kraut-like passages. Titles such as "Una Cellula," "Energia," "Fenomenologia," and "Mutazione" may indicate that this is a heavy concept album indeed, and the theme of birth and rebirth may well have been a hot topic of the time.
Member of: Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale, Telaio Magnetico
KUM - Percorsi intrecciati con Franco Battiato
300 copies. Double LP, gatefold cover + inserts. After Juke Box (1977), between September 1978 and March 1979, the inseparable Giusto Pio and Franco Battiato committed to three pieces that should be interpreted as a single work since they both pursue and envision a sound that is independent of any form of language: Motore immobile, L’Egitto prima delle sabbie, and Rappel. Motore Immobile by Pio (completed in October 1978) was published only in 1979 to avoid interfering with the release/publicati…
Clic
CD edition. There is no figure in Italian music, nor within the country’s shimmering, expansive avant-garde, who demands the respect and awe offered to Franco Battiato. He is the beginning and the end. An artist whose output, stretching across six decades, is so diverse and singular, that it defies any concrete definition - darting from psychedelic Prog, definitive gestures in the history of Minimalism, to the heights of explicit Pop. Like many of his contemporaries, Battiato’s journey toward av…
Pollution
Franco Battiato's wonderfully lively 1973 concept album Pollution is an audaciously psychedelic album drawn from the space rock dimension with good portions of electronics and keyboard layers. Drawing heavily on the VCS3 synthesizer, Battiato and company (besides himself, three backing band members play synth as well) give Pollution an extreme electronic edge. With comparisons to Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, and Pink Floyd, Pollution was declared 'genius' by Frank Zappa.
Fetus
Franco Battiato moved into the 1970s on the crest of the progressive rock wave. This 1972 impossibly strange record inhabits that nether world of pop music, electronics, politics and experimental rock. Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a masterpiece of daring and wild risks that work every single time. Battiato takes us through eight uniquely super-detailed songs that tug at the heart strings as no other experimental record ever could."Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a …
Sulle corde di Aries
* 300 copies, machine-printed numbered edition, gatefold cover, 180gr vinyl * 1973’s Sulle Corde Di Aries was Franco Battiato's third release and showed his fascination for electronic, minimalist and systemic musics, as well as his third chapter in Battiato’s foray into esoteric pop. While the artist would venture further out into avant-garde terrain on subsequent releases, his early records enjoy a lyrical and playful spirit—eschewing traditional, song-based composition in favor of kosmische vo…
Vietato Ai Minori Di 18 Anni?
Limited Time Offer Deluxe ltd. ed. LP edition with original gatefold cover artwork and 180 gr. Clear Red Vinyl. One of the best italian progressive rock/experimental album released in Italy "Vietato ai minori di 18 anni?" is Jumbo's third album from 1973, is their most ambitious work, containing strong lyrics and fragments of avantgarde-inspired music, with the help of Franco Battiato's great VCS3 oscillators and Lino Capra Vaccina's (of Aktuala fame) bells and chimes' sinister tolling. Long spa…
l'Egitto prima delle Sabbie
*White vinyl repress* Mindblowing! The last album of what could be called Franco Battiato's "experimental prog" period, L'Egitto Prima Delle Sabbie consists of two sidelong compositions strictly arranged for piano only, without any vocals; and even more intriguingly, neither of the performers on the album are Battiato himself. He limited himself strictly to the roles of composer and producer. After Battiato's many different sonic explorations and efforts throughout the '70s, such an effort may s…
Juke Box
*White vinyl repress* The highly neglected record by Franco Battiato! Originally intended as the soundtrack for TV movie 'Brunelleschi', it was rejected — allegedly, for being "not appropriate enough". Their loss. It is also the first official collaboration with Giusto Pio, at the time engaged as violinist in the RAI orchestra of Milan, as well as first violin at Orchestra - Teatro alla Scala. Over the following decades, Pio and Battiato formed a close collaborative relationship – chasing each …
Motore Immobile
To quote Pitchfork, this is 'one of the most sumptuous, spiritual ambient albums of any era or provenance.
Franco Battiato, Nucleus (Book)
Absolutely recommended. Photographs by Roberto Masotti, texts by Carlo Maria Cella, Silvia Lelli, Luca Scarlini. This is the third volume dedicated to musicians-composers that Masotti has collected for and with the publisher Seipersei after those dedicated to Keith Jarrett and John Cage. The one on Battiato shows a panorama of photographs that starts in 1973 with a service made in Bologna in the studio and on location commissioned by the Bla Bla label by Pino Massara and followed by a whole seri…
Area Di Servizio
* Clear red vinyl edition * "Area di Servizio" is a truly unique release in the history of ‘70s Italian music: a record consisting of twelve Italian-sung compositions, mainly the result of the collaboration between Riccardo “Rolli” Pirolli and Franco Battiato: the first came from the Cristalli Fragili group, which Battiato wanted as his musicians in the early seventies. The album recording sessions lasted a few days, and several songs were written and arranged directly in the studio. The result …
Franco Battiato
Temporary nicer price * * 45th Anniversary Edition, 180 gr. Red Vinyl * *Franco Battiato also known as "Za" was the first album for Ricordi, and the Franco Battiato's conceptualism becomes very rigorous and authoritative. It is made of two long tracks, Za, in the author's own words "Apparently poor. Almost completely made up of one chord. Deliberately percussive (the right pedal is never used), it divides and subtracts resonances, with a technique of release. It needs a listening that I would de…
Foetus
* Limited clear Green vinyl edition / Silver laminated cover* English language version! Fetus, housed in a outrageous cover (reproducing a foetus) was definitely a prog album, but a very original one, with a minimalist sound mainly based on the use of a VCS3 synth, unusual lyrics, complex arrangements. Deluxe remastered issue, gatefold cover. "Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a masterpiece of daring and wild risks that work every single time. Franco Battiato takes us through eight u…
La Convenzione / Paranoia (7")
* 2021 Stock. * Pollution from 1972 is the captivating follow-up to Fetus. Like its predecessor, the album features Baroque textures, motorik rhythms, weird tape effects and Franco Battiato’s perfectly oblique vocals, with a minimalist sound mainly based on the use of a VCS3 synth, unusual lyrics, complex arrangements: upon hearing Pollution, Frank Zappa joyfully proclaimed it “genius.” While Battiato’s core group of collaborators remains largely the same as on his debut, this phenomenal band (j…
La Voce Del Padrone (40th Anniversary) LP
* Black vinyl, 180 gr. LP with printed inner * The turning-point of Franco Battiato's career: from uncompromising experimentation and progressive electronica to catchy melodies and refrains. The transition had already begun with L'era del cinghiale bianco, but "La voce del padrone" made it complete: its seven refinate synth-pop, with a bit of Krautrock influence, anthems catapulted the album to the top of the hit parade and made it the best-selling Italian album ever. Meticulously produced, with…
M.elle Le "Gladiator"
Before Franco Battiato went flying into the sun of mininalist avant prog... he gave us this absolute classic of an album. A dense ambient electronic album with some avant sections that hint broadly on where he would be heading in the years down the road. This album was the culmiination of his early electronic period. The avant hints that were dropped in Sulle Corde di Aries are even more pronounced here, and possbily more fully realized. A incredible album.
The opening track, Goutez Et Comparez,…
Patriots (40th Remastered Edition) LP
Franco Battiato's 1980 album Patriots, his first for the major multinational company EMI, found him moving to more of a synth-based pop/rock sound, the better to create stirring anthems like the opening track, "Up Patriots to Arms." The 40th anniversary edition of the album adds four bonus tracks, including English- and Spanish-language versions of that song. Later Battiato albums would enjoy widespread commercial success, but Patriots set the stage for that mass popularity.
Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale
** 500 copies only reissue, housed in its original artwork with the addition of a bonus 7" EP, a reproduction of a giant original poster and 3 inserts** Giacomo “Mino” di Martino started his musical career in several early 1960s Italian beat bands. By 1968 he had found enormous success with pop superstars I Giganti. After a brief split in 1970 –during which Mino formed Il Supergruppo with Ricky Gianco and other greats of the Italian scene– he came back to I Giganti in 1971. With them and with ne…