Miraloop & Cramps Music will publish the music of Giusto Pio, the pop soul of Franco Battiato

Data di pubblicazione 07/07/2023

Bologna, 30th May 2023

We can finally announce that we have signed an agreement with Cramps Music and Associazione Centro Studi Giusto Pio for an amazing recording, cultural and marketing operation in our little story! It will be a challenge will require an important work, but also an exciting challenge, both culturally and discographically. Our payoff is #unveilingvisions, and we are taking it literally, because this is really about revealing a vision, a vision of a life dedicated to music, the music of Giusto Pio, historical collaborator of Franco Battiato. It’s also thanks to him for the lucky pop turn and all his greatest successes. Let’s find out what it is, enjoy reading!

Readers of this blog, fans of our catalog of independent music or web radio listeners already know who we are, we say in summary to all the others who are here that we are a very young record company active since 2008 in Bologna, oriented on artistic production, kick start of debutante projects and experimentation in different genres. We would like to tell you many other things but, at this moment, we can’t wait to introduce you to the other two members of the group: Associazione Centro Studi Giusto Pio and Cramps Music. A partnership of three realities has been formed in recent months through long meetings in north-eastern Italy between Bologna, where Miraloop, Vicenza, where Cramps Music is based and finally Venice, the land of Stefano Pio, son of Giusto.

Plays an important role in the knowledge between Miraloop and Stefano Pio the article published in this blog by Gerolamo Sacco on Franco Battiato: The article is a long telephone interview transcribed into about thirty pages that tells the experimental Battiato of the very first years, that of "Meccanica" and "Da Oriente a Occidente", what radio never passes, the Battiato without Giusto Pio.

The relationship between Miraloop and the Association is consolidated later when the Bologna studio, whit the designer Niccolò Sacco, the work of transforming the original drawings of Stefano in animations and videos for the screenings of a theater show dedicated to the music of Franco Battiato written with his father:all the hits that made Battiato famous in the late seventies and eighties.

We do not want to be rhetorical, but only to emphasize who is Giusto Pio.

(Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio in a photo by Franco Masotti taken from the volume "Uno Sguardo dal Ponte", Antiga Edizioni)

The first partner that we present is Associazione Centro Studi Giusto Pio, founded by his son Stefano, also violinist as his father and long-time writer. ACS Giusto Pio is born recently, but the history of the musician of Castelfranco Veneto, as we ironically guessed, is an integral part of the history of music in our country.
Do they tell you anything such as "L'era del Cinghiale Bianco", "Voglio vederti Danzare", "Alexander Platz", "I Treni di Tozeur", "Bandiera Bianca", "Up Patriot to Arms" and all the countless masterpieces by Franco Battiato from 1976 to 1988?
Here, this is Giusto Pio.

...The fact, however, that we must explain it to you, without unfortunately being able to take it for granted, is one of the main reasons why the Association dedicated to Giusto Pio was founded. We want to define it "the Pop soul of Franco Battiato"

It may seem strange, but everyone knows that "Dieci ragazze" is not only Lucio Battisti. It is said, even in bars, "Battisti & Mogol". The star was Lucio, but everyone also knows his musical travel companion. One could say that Battiato & Pio is like saying Battisti & Mogol, from an artistic point of view, but Pio is not as famous as Mogol. And it sounds strange, also because Pio was not the author of the lyrics and Battiato the one of the music: the songs that made Franco Battiato famous were created together from the beginning to the end with Pio. 360-degree artistic partnership.

As Stefano Pio tells in the volume just published on the association between his father and Franco Battiato: 

For the album "L'era del cinghiale bianco" 6 tracks were ready. The record company wanted at least one more. " Luna Indiana" was composed in a single night, in my bedroom. The family piano was there. Battiato came to us because in his piano he had removed some keys and some strings to complete some experimental work, it was a bit shabby. I had to sleep in another room.

However, the mainstream narrative too often tells the story of Battiato giving at the venetian composer an extra role. The task of bringing back Giusto Pio where he deserves to be is precisely the purpose of the newborn Association, in which Miraloop and Cramps Music will operate.

And so we come to Cramps Music. Cramps is the other subject who will participate in this challenge.  Today Cramps is the creator of several Italian successes, under the direction of Alfred Tisocco, but it is a brand that has been operating in this market for 50 years, and does so in a radical way. To define it with the words of Giuseppe Catani on Wired, "the most revolutionary and countercurrent Italian label": we are talking about the label that launched Franco Battiato but also Skiantos , Area and Demetrio Stratos. The label of Eugenio Finardi, Roberto Vecchioni, Tullio de Piscopo and so many others that if we start quoting them all we forget to write this article and we begin to tell you the story of the underground of the Italian seventies.

For this we refer you to this beautiful article by Rockit. 

Now that we have told you the actors, the characters of the story, we just have to tell you what we are going to do together. But first you must know that Giusto Pio wrote, composed and played an exorbitant amount of musical works.

Many of Pio’s music are the ones that gave Battiato international popularity, and you all know them. But many others don’t.

Only one opera, Motore Immobile, a small masterpiece of contemporary music, is currently published by SONY Entertainment, and you can listen to it here. But what about the others?
How many works are there by Giusto Pio? How do they sound?
Who have they written with? Is there a common thread between them?

(Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio in a photo by Franco Masotti taken from the volume "Uno Sguardo dal Ponte", Antiga Edizioni)

Says Stefano Pio: the challenge in front of us is not simple, because if it is true that Giusto Pio deserves to "fly first class" as Massimiliano Perrotta told on Huffington Post reviewing my book, to recover 40 years of narration missed it takes a lot: experience, intuition, love of music."

This adventure for Stefano Pio starts precisely from an intuition, that of writing a book on Franco Battiato's association with his father Giusto Pio. And so "Giusto Pio & Franco Battiato: uno sguardo dal Ponte", published by Antiga Edizioni. This book anticipates the recording work that we are preparing with the Associazione Studi Giusto Pio e Cramps.

Uno Sguardo dal Ponte is written by Stefano but, really, it is as if it were written by the memory of his father, because much of the content is precisely the stories of Giusto Pio; between thoughts, memories, anecdotes and unpublished photographs. We have read it (we are also quoted) and knowing deeply the history of the sicilian singer-songwriter we can afford to tell you that, perhaps, Uno Sguardo dal Ponte is the richest book of information on the world of Franco Battiato of all those published in the last 30 years.

Stay tuned with us to begin this long journey together with us and the fantastic music of the venetian violinist who gave Franco Battiato a place in the history of Italian music.

The first publication will be announced here on this Blog

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