CLIC

It's said Franco Battiato always gets really upset when somebody names Brian Eno in his presence. Listen to "Clic" and you'll understand why: this record is the perfect communion of ambient electronics, classical intrumentation and (sometimes) pure noisy cacophony. "I cancelli della memoria" starts the album in a gentle, subtle way (really close to some Bowie/ Eno experiments that would appear in "Low"... one year later), followed up by "No U Turn", with its bizarre reversed vocals, melancholy lyrics and that closing section where a waltz- like sequencer arrangement meets a female voice that i'll swear is Yma Sumac's. Bizarre but effective. "Il Mercato Degli Dei" and "Nel Cantiere D' Una Infanzia" stay into the same gentle style, while "Rien Ne Va Plus (Adagio)" and the closing "Etica Fon Ethika" are both approaches to "musique concrete": the first one is made out of sounds created by musicians themselves at the studio, the second being a confusing collage of radio fragments taken from different stages of Italy's recent History: folk songs, political speeches, news broadcasts and even the fascist hymn "Faccetta Nera" are mixed here. But "Clic" 's real highlight is "Propiedad Prohibida": it starts with an ominous synth drone soon replaced with a Tangerine- Dream like sequenced bass line, overlaid with string and wind arrangements that create an almost unearthly feeling of sadness. The perfect sound description of the "anni di piombo" ("lead years"), the ruinous period of political and social turmoil that shook Italy during the mid- late seventies, "Clic" is a really cold, cold record, detached and distant like a theorema.