Upupayāma’s Alessio Ferrari on Lucio Battisti – Anima Latina 
Over the past few years Italy’s one-man font of psychedelic swirl, Upupayāma has been on constant rotation around here. Three albums in, it feels like Alessio Ferrari is just getting started. His latest is a dense, ornamental dive into Anatolian psych, Bhutanese folk, Thai disco, and the more pastoral contingent of ‘70s German Progressives, so naturally when I’d asked him for a Hidden Gems feature, I could only imagine where the pick might lead. Turns out it was closer to home than I’d expected. Check out Allessio’s dive into a beautiful Italian ‘80s gem from Lucio Battisti.
“I love those records whose notes continue to resonate even after the last reverberation echo has faded, settling on the ground. It is not easy to explain, but the album I have chosen might help you understand this thought of mine. I am talking about Lucio Battisti’s Anima Latina. This is one of those, unfortunately, Italian albums. I say “unfortunately” because I am convinced that if an English band had written, played, and recorded it, there would have been much more talk about it today.”
“This record came into my life about ten years ago. At first, I only listened to the drum intro because this record opens with drums coming from afar, like a traveller whose figure becomes sharper and sharper once he emerges from the distant fog and approaches with slow steps. I liked this drumming alone, and it almost hypnotized me. Although I am Italian, I know little about Lucio Battisti, but at the time, I wanted to learn more about this beautiful piece of music. As soon as I discovered it was a Lucio Battisti album, I thought ‘this is a madman, this is a beautiful madman! It has to be said that Lucio Battisti is mostly known for what I call ‘beach songs’, that is, songs a group of Italian kids would sing on a beach with a guitar on a summer evening. It has great melodies and arrangements, but it is not my cup of tea, as they say. So, I found out the album was by Lucio Battisti, and I bought it sight unseen also because it has a beautiful cover and boom! I was blown away! I thought ‘it had instrumental parts from another world! Courageous, tastefully played, ambitious, outside the usual fucking Italian canons! Well, I’m glad!’.”
“Earlier, I spoke of the notes that settle on the ground, but you continue to hear them throughout the album. Their reverberation rings faintly behind your ears and in your stomach even after you have finished listening to the whole LP. I like to call them ‘organic notes’. Yes, this album has only organic notes. Starting with the drum intro I mentioned earlier, it goes from an almost singer-songwriter folk to a funk that smells of library music. At a certain point, you hear weird instruments, small percussions that give circularity to an acoustic guitar, a bass that sounds like something out of a record from the future, crazy circus trumpets, etc. In short, it is an inspiring album in the truest sense of the word. You continually hear musicians with a capital M letting themselves go, letting go of boring mathematics to immerse themselves in an eternal novel, having fun and consequently entertaining the listener. It is music that leaves room for imagination, allowing you to travel wherever you decide to go.”
I cannot say that this album has had a strong or direct influence on Upupayāma’s music to date; however, I can say that it has strongly influenced Upupayāma’s approach to song. I am talking about the humanistic side at the expense of the mathematical side. I’m talking about the fun of making music, of being surprised by an unexpected solution, maybe even a bit wrong. And actually, when I think about it, even musically, it had some impact; I’m thinking of percussion, some guitars, sounds and atmospheres. Anything can touch those who possess even the slightest sensitivity, and I can give the example of when, while I was composing ‘Mount Elephant’, I met this deaf cat and tried several times to interact with him. He was very wary, it was difficult to approach him, but then I succeeded, and he followed me every time he saw me. At one point, I even thought it was the spirit of someone I knew. Unfortunately I haven’t seen him for a while, I hope nothing bad happened to him.”
“Having said that, I would have liked to be better at explaining my concept of organic notes, of those notes that sound high, rise towards the sky and then slowly settle on the ground like light snowflakes and stay there, embracing you. It is like the embrace of a good wizard in whom you recognize the people you love and never leave you; they resonate in you even when the show is over. I think this is magic. If I haven’t explained it well – it’s my English that limps a bit – I recommend listening to this wonderful album.”
I’d be the first to admit that my familiarity with the deeper boundaries of Italian music aren’t what they should be, so this is definitely a new one on me. The record is every bit as engrossing as Alessio makes it out to be, an expansive album that pushes outside of the expectations built from the artist’s catalog. Physically, this one’s a bit hard to come by, but in an age of digital representation, it’s out there for the intrepid streamers and the download crowd as well. While it might not make an aesthetic companion to Upupayāma’s latest, it’s a standalone treasure with stunning production. After you immerse yourself in ‘80s Italian pop, dip into Upupayāma’s new album Mount Elephant, out now on Fuzz Club.
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