Description
“Sillyboy, the label owned by Italian band Jennifer Gentle (now on Sub Pop Records), is proud to announce the release of What’s your function?, a tribute to the legendary Italian avant-composer Franco Battiato. Loved by artists like Julian Cope, Jim O’Rourke and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), Battiato is now a famous and successful popstar, but in the early Seventies, alongside with Area and PFM, he was one of the prime movers of the burgeoning Italian prog-rock scene and became a cult figure in countries like UK and Japan. What made Battiato completely different from other progressive acts of the era was his strong sense of humour and quirky approach to music, while his lyrics were an idiosyncratic mix of Gurdjeff teachings and Flash Gordon sci-fi imagery. Pretentious, naive, but always compelling, Battiato’s early works are a milestone in the otherwise slim canon of Italian rock — an unholy, fucked-up mix of krautrock, electronics and Stockhausen-influenced sonic collages never to be equalled. In order to salute this strange looking, out-there pioneer, we called friends from all around the globe — we asked to cover his songs and the result is a sampler of fine fine artists approaching the oblique, bizarre art of Franco.” Artists: Volcano the Bear, Kinski, Hrvatski, Zu vs. Okapi, Jennifer Gentle, Land of Nod, Cul de Sac, Los Natas, Circle, Oneida, Acid Mother’s Temple + Ruins.
