Monday, September 4, 2017

Fenominologia - Phenomenology

È incerto il processo mentale
La voce è marmo e cemento
Vivo malgrado me stesso...
Difficile attuare il controllo
Attorno i miei occhi c'è nebbia
I contorni si fanno imprecisi...
Ho già scordato la mia dimensione
E forze sconosciute mi strappano da me...
L'esotomia, I'IBM-azione
De-cloro-de-fenilchetone
Essedi-etilizzazione
Han dato vita
Alla programmazione
X1 = A*sen (ωt), x2 = A*sen (ωt + γ)

Fenomenologia © 1971 Franco Battiato

The equations repeated at the end of the song relate to the harmonic oscillators used in Battiato's VCS3 synthesizer. And to my ears, Battiato's voice here is channeling some John Lennon!



It’s unsure, the mental process.
The voice is marble and cement,
I live in spite of myself . . .
Difficult to effect the control.
Around my eyes there is a fog,
the outlines are done imprecisely . . .
I already forgot my dimension
And unknown forces rip myself from me . . .
The exotomy, the IBM-action,
dichlorodiphenylketone,
essedi-etilizzatione
have given life
to the coding
x1 = A*sin (ωt), x2 = A*sin (ωt + γ)

English translation © 2020 Dennis Criteser

“Franco Battiato is often heralded as Italy's answer to Brian Eno. . . (Battiato) turned pop music upside down in the early '70s with three classic LPs – Fetus, Pollution and Sulle Corde Di Aries – that formed a confluence of avant-folk sensibilities and analog electronics. . . With his trusted VCS3 synthesizer, Battiato created primordial soundscapes that shift between dreamy and delirious. His unsentimental, yet evocative voice – combined with a sublimely detached approach to lyrics – spawned a new breed of divergent songwriting. Fetus, a concept album exploring themes of genetic engineering, is enigmatically sub-titled "Ritorno al Mondo Nuovo" (Return to the New World) and dedicated to Aldous Huxley. . . Battiato’s infectious melodies and innovative sound-collage techniques remain uniquely spry . . . (behind) the curious beauty of Fetus.” – Superior Viaduct review.

Fetus was released in 1971 on the small alternative label Bla Bla. The provocative cover led many stores to not even display the album. The inside cover is of Niki de Saint Phalle's Hon (She) sculpture from her 1966 installation for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The lyrics on Fetus were written by Sergio Albergoni and Gianni Sassi under the pseudonym of Frankenstein, and then fine-tuned during recording by Battiato. Their publicity agency, Al.Sa., was also responsible for publicizing the album and subsequent tour, and the duo were quite involved in collaborating with Battiato and in creating his public persona as a ground-breaking and iconoclastic new artist. Just when recording was to begin on the album, Battiato was drafted to serve in the army. He was so unsuited to military life that, through his passive resistance to doing anything, he ended up being shuffled around the country in various military hospitals until ending up in one in Milan, from which he was able to escape at night and go into the studio to record the album. The music was not composed in advance, but rather developed in the studio, with input from all the musicians and from the recording engineer as well. Battiato was the second to purchase the newly invented VCS3 synthesizer, the first being Pink Floyd.
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