Sulle corde di Aries - On the Strings of Aries

After the release of his first album, Fetus, Battiato performed regularly and continued to do so through the making of his second album, Pollution. Meanwhile his publicity firm was developing the image of Battiato as an iconoclastic avant-garde artist, a musician who remained distant from his public, confronting them with challenging material in the process of repudiating traditional Italian music tastes. Some concerts got out of control as audience members became rowdy and fights broke out. Battiato grew ever more uncomfortable with this public persona. He cared more about creating new music and felt the need to exit the path he was on. So he distanced himself from his collaborators/promoters and moved to New York City to “find himself.” Instead of experiencing creative renewal, he fell into a deep state of spiritual crisis and isolation. Ending his life seemed like the best solution. One night he surrendered to his despair, only to find himself in an exalted state of being that he’d only previously experienced in his reveries while exploring the new electronic sounds of his VCS3 synthesizer. He returned to Sicily and realized he needed to build into his daily life a routine of retreat and meditation. Battiato said, “During the recording of this album I discovered my road, my instinctive nature, in the primordial sense.”