Lucio Battisti: Don Giovanni (Numero Uno, 1986)

The songs in "Don Giovanni" sound lopsided and aloof. They obey the synth-pop rule in a lunar, idiosincratic manner. They seem totally lifeless, artificial, made of plastic despite some sparse velvety warmth in the basslines, in the saxophone seductions and in the rainy, breathy synth tides. The melodies are quirky, meandery, undoubtably "pop" and refined but hardly catchy. The lyrics, well, the lyrics are a closed book: almost nonsensical, blatantly post-modern and sardonic, they're captivating nevertheless and - once you've partly got into them - even evocative. With its jaunty and polished synth-funky grooves and its obliterating lyrics framed into the melodies with a total disdain for the meter, "Don Giovanni" is one of the most abstract and undeciphrable works of Italian pop music.

Lucio Battisti was the most celebrated Italian pop artist of the 60s/70s. "Don Giovanni" is his first collaboration with lyricist Pasquale Panella, and a complete departure from his previous style, which had become more and more experimental but never appeared so tough and detached before.


Tracklist:

1. Le cose che pensano
2. Fatti un pianto
3. Il doppio del gioco
4. Madre pennuta
5. Equivoci amici
6. Don Giovanni
7. Che vita ha fatto
8. Il diluvio

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Lucio Battisti: Anima latina (Numero Uno, 1975)

This is the sixth album by Italian pop colossus Lucio Battisti. It is much probably the most experimental one Battisti released while still collaborating with lyricist Mogol, who had written for him in the late Sixties some of the most successful Italian pop songs ever.
The recording of "Anima latina" (the title means "latin soul") follows a trip to South America Battisti and Mogol undertook in the beginning of 1974. Many of the sounds and lyrical themes, indeed, reflect a fascination with the music and the social contrasts of Brazil.

The final sound of the album is something unique: metamorphic pop hooks dissolved into an extremely dilated jazz-rock stream, often blessed by surprisingly lucid, anti-psychedelic world music premonitions and heavenly synthetizer suspensions. It might be called "progressive rock" perhaps, but in fact this fusion originated from a completely different route than any English or European progressive: the sound of "Anima latina" is a figment of the work of an astounding number of collabortors, the arrangements feature the most different instruments and the whole album fluctuates in an otherwordly funky groove which is very far from the prog-rock standards. The opening "Abbracciala, abbracciali, abbracciati" may even remind of later Talk Talk and their soulful, emptied-out approach!


Tracklist:

1. Abbracciala, abbracciali, abbracciati
2. Due mondi
3. Anonimo
4. Gli uomini celesti
5. Gli uomini celesti - ripresa
6. Due mondi - ripresa
7. Anima latina
8. Il salame
   
9. La nuova America
   
10. Macchina del tempo
11. Separazione naturale

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