An easy listen that toys with a comfortable mysticism. Franco Battiato’s music is warmly harmonized, hazily atmospheric and utterly synthetic. The voice is that of a gentle balladeer, close-miked in the ‘pop’ sense and thrown into occasional echo; the style of writing, a surface reflection of Part, or Glass, or the Gorecki of the Third Symphony. Battiato’s strategy takes note of all three, cancels any intellectual demands and floats the balance in a sea of ambience. The first song, L’ombra della luce (“The shadow of the light”) is both the simplest and most attractive and could easily take flight in the charts. The Messa Arcaica features a 14'29'' Kyrie where what sounds like a one-finger piano commentary (the sort that habitually crops up on the soundtracks to soap operas) keeps company with a synthesized drone and curvaceous waves of choral tone. The Haiku (where the prescribed 17 syllables is at least quadrupled) sports a contrasting female voice and the Ricerca sul terzo a tabla and what sounds like a sitar.
EMI’s booklet features an evangelical note and an interview where the composer affects a Zen-like inscrutability. Here I quote: “Your music often includes Middle Eastern and Indian references, two cultures with strong links to the spiritual. Is this the reason or is there another?” And the answer? “This is the reason.” Clearly not a fruitful line of questioning or, as Gerald Seligman himself aptly puts it, “when the questions are longer than the answers, it is time for another approach for the liner-notes. Or is this just Battiato’s roundabout way of saying, Let the music speak for itself.” Wise words indeed.'