Battiato

The peak of Battiato’s experimental phase, and to these ears, his best album. Battiato has the titular artist embracing minimalism to its fullest – of the two side-long tracks here, “Za” is a simple, yet compelling meditation on two chords for piano, with the pianist, Antonio Ballista, using the damper pedal to subtly alter what we hear from the instrument, such that it achieves ghostly resonance, the afterlife of the tones ringing out sympathetically. The other side, “Café-Table-Musik”, is my personal favourite piece of music ever composed by Battiato, a beautiful yet unsettling series of snapshots, from lovely piano-and-voice meanderings, through spoken word interludes, to sharp edits that cut to sudden drama – it has the disruptive spirit of Godard at his creative peak. Battiato would release two more experimental albums (including the equally compelling mini, Juke Box) before taking a sharp right turn into a successful career in pop stardom, though there’d always remain something quite odd about his music, even at its most commercial. But this album, somehow, fully captures his essence.