Four years have passed since Franco Battiato’s death. The Catanese artist, who would have turned 80 today, left an immense musical legacy. In 50 years of career he has explored light music, progressive rock, avant -garde, sacred music, classic and, of course pop, but revised under his very personal perspective. In 1979 with the era of white wild boar, Battiato abandoned the path of experimentation and begins to explore the new wave. A path that continues with the next album, Patriots of 1980 and reaches its culmination, artistic and successful in 1981 with the owner’s voice.

Genesis

Before becoming the prophet of the cultured pop, Battiato was an electronic mystic who experienced with synthesizers and drone music. Then, one day, he woke up and decided that he would bring philosophy to Juke-Box. At the beginning of the 80s the Sicilian singer -songwriter is a cosmic knight who after Patriots It closes in a sound bunker with the usual handful of alchemists and some new recruits to forge This album that would have overturned the fate of Italian pop. In the Cantina-Studio where the owner’s voice is born, between a minimal effects counter and a studio 24, you can breathe an almost monastic air: no crazy nights, no excesses from Rockstar, Battiato works like a Zen watchmaker and at 7:15 pm he is always at home for dinner.

The first version of the album was born under the sign of the Drum Machine Roland 808, which however sounds like a defective toaster. Next to Battiato, there is a great guitarist, Alberto Radius, who had already collaborated with the Catania and who enlisters Alfredo Golino to give a soul of meat and bones to percussion. To complete the spell, the Choir of the Madrigalists of Milan, called to replace the choristers of Rai, too clumsy to stay behind the rhythmic visions of Battiato.

The master’s voice, a journey into the soul of Franco Battiato

Success

On September 21, 1981 the record arrives in the shops, but it takes a few months to explode. Then it is apotheosis: the audience realizes that that strange songwriter-philosopher has created a masterpiece, and the owner’s voice climbs the ranking like a fakir on the spin-success of success. In 1982 Battiato filled Palasport and Stadi, the whole of Italy sings white flag, Cuccurucucù and a permanent center of gravity, without even knowing what they mean.

In the meantime, the album lands in France, Germany, Spain and beyond. It is the first Italian LP to overcome the million copies sold. Battiato said: “This album will be successful”. He had decided. He had designed it. He had shaped him with the science of the absurd. And he had won.

Anatomy of a masterpiece: the songs

Seven tracks, the perfect size. Battiato weaves a labyrinth of quotes, words of words and semantic joints that appear as nonsense but are actually formulas to awaken consciences. His voice, the result of studies on the Arabic language, penetrates the ether with a purity that makes the competition disappear.

The album opens with Summer on a Solary Beach, a bathing dream: languid piano, synthesizers who spread like sun cream. A distorted summer, a hypnotic loop that is never banal. White flag follows with a sharp irony and quotes from Dylan to Doors: an invective against the yield of ideals to mass culture, a timeless hymn.

The birds drags us into hyperuranium, a melody that becomes mantra, a journey between Theosophy and Gurdjieff, in which the listener abandon himself to a cosmic fluctuation. In Cuccurucuucù Battiato has fun mixing musical and literary references, from Méndez to the Beatles, making a tropical nostalgia a test of musical culture disguised as pop.

Signs of life is a reflection on existence, a mystical mantra accompanied by a pulsating rhythm, while the center of permanent gravity becomes the anthem of the desire for balance in a world without reference points. The perfect pop piece, with a beat that enters the DNA. The album ends with Sentimiento Nuevo, where sensuality and spirituality merge into a song that suggests that sex is a mystical experience without saying it explicitly, leaving us suspended between heaven and earth.

“Franco Battiato’s house will become a protected cultural asset”

What remains of Battiato today?

Every time you listen to an artist who plays with genres, who puts improbable quotes in a pop piece, which dares to mix high and low culture without asking for permission, there is a piece of The owner’s voice inside. Before Battiato, either you were busy songwriter or you made light music. He mixes everything: the sacred and the profane, rock and beauty, cabaret and philosophy. Without him, no Subsonica, no baustelle, no bluvertigo, and perhaps not even certain experiments of Vasco.

The fact is that, more than forty years later, the album still sounds very modern. As if the weather was really that elastic that stretches and shortens to love. And if Franco was here today, he would probably smile by seeing us again here, looking for our center of permanent gravity.

Author: Franco Battiato
Title: The owner’s voice
Type: Pop
Year: 1981 (Italian Emi)
Editorial mark: 8/10