FRANCO BATTIATO - Un soffio al cuore di natura elettrica (Cd+Dvd)

“You're also trying your hand at the concert-album-plus-DVD format, Mr. Battiato. Of your own free will?” “No, the record label wanted it.”

(La Stampa, 24-11-05)

The words of Franco Battiato say it all: what remains to be understood, if anything, is why an artist with a career spanning more than thirty years and excellent sales figures should still have to bow to a record label's diktats.

A record label which, on top of that, has decided to release this product in two different formats: either CD (+ DVD) or DVD (+ CD), even though the content is exactly the same - though we won't pretend to fully grasp these marketing mechanisms, which, with Christmas as an accomplice, will no doubt reward this little scheme regardless.

The CD is the recording of a concert Battiato gave at the “Nelson Mandela Forum” in Florence on 17 February 2005, as part of the “X Stratagemmi tour” (which we covered at the time in our Live Report): a shame, though, that in order to avoid putting out a costly double CD, someone decided to trim the concert down to about 60 minutes, cutting out all the most interesting and rare songs Battiato had performed, such as “Via Lattea”, “La stagione dell'amore”, “Meccanica” and “Areknames”.

So what's left, then? What's left is a beautiful performance featuring many songs from the latest album, one unreleased track ("Come Away Death", based on a Shakespeare sonnet) and the usual classics already found on other, far more complete live albums.

One might also wonder what's the point of releasing a DVD with a trimmed-down performance (yes, because the DVD has the same setlist as the CD), when there's no space issue involved in this case, and when buying a DVD is usually supposed to get you something extra, not even less than the CD.

A Christmas gift for the most die-hard (and fetishistic) Battiato completists; everyone else can safely ignore it, since Epiphany will be sweeping away these "fake" records soon enough anyway.

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30/04/2026