Fetus in Bloomington, MN

On this '70s outing, an early work by the Italian
experimental pop
composer, the great singer was influenced considerably by his background in
experimental electronic
music. 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
Tangerine Dream-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.
Battiato
's albums can simultaneously be a display of genius and an overindulgent mess of '70s-style studio tricks, and it is that fine line of tension that somehow makes them all sublime. A common thread runs through his work right up until his 2000 release,
Fleurs
. Whatever the trends in popular music of the time, he appropriates them into his own form, with his idiosyncratic songs remaining centrifugal regardless of the wildness of the experiment. Often getting very heady along the way,
's conceptual and narrative realizations are fantastical in a similar fashion to those of
David Bowie
Scott Walker
. ~ Sylvie Harrison