Franco Battiato – Clic {1974}

Franco Battiato is an internationally known Italian composer, musician, filmmaker and painter. In his early days in the 1960s he had some success collaborating with the psych/prog outfit Osage Tribe that played an interesting but from today’s view rather silly Indian tribal sound. But his first four own albums are, in my humble opinion, astonishing masterpieces, each with a different musical perspective ranging from Psych and Prog-Rock to Singer-Songwriter to Musique Concrète and Kosmische/Krautrock. Sadly, most of his early releases Fetus (1971), Pollution (1972), Sulle Corde di Aries (1973) are blocked on Youtube in Germany. That’s why I picked the album album Clic from 1974 which is available on Vimeo and is dedicated to Karlheinz Stockhausen. If you more into rock music I can recommend the single La Convenzione / Paranoia from 1972. All four albums were released on Bla Bla Records from Milano, here’s their Facebook page. Reissues on vinyl are still available on the Italian website BTF where you can buy Fetus, Pollution and Clic. Battiato is considered one of the most original Italian musicians and artists and is still making and performing music today. Fun fact: In Battiato’s second movie called Musikanten the Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky played the German composer Beethoven.