Only in Brooklyn would you find a place called the Body Actualized Center For Cosmic Living. Its mission, as outlined on a website that resembles a Yeasayer album campaign, is all about "raising human consciousness by supporting the artist within". The ideal venue, in other words, for a recent comeback gig by 70s cosmic rocker Franco Falsini, who was raising consciousness through music long before the hipster hippies conquered the area.
Over the past 40 years, the Italian underground legend has embraced progressive rock, disco, post-punk, acid house and even psychedelic trance, but is only now, in his 60s, enjoying a revival of sorts. DJ Shadow, it should be said, was the first to acknowledge him, sampling Falsini's pioneering 70s group Sensations' Fix – Florence's answer to Faust or Pink Floyd – on 2002's The Private Press. In 2008, Sonic Youth paid their own discreet tribute by subtitling an exhibition of their artwork and ephemera "Sensational Fix", while last year John Elliott – from US hip synth voyagers Emeralds – reissued Falsini's 1975 solo album Cold Nose, an enchanting drone piece originally composed for a short film warning of the dangers of cocaine use.
At the time, Falsini's Italian label Polydor was freaked out by his group of longhairs. "They thought we were a bunch of drug addicts to be kept at a distance," he told the It's Psychedelic Baby blog earlier this year. "We were kept out of the studios with the excuse that 'the smoke was hurting the machines'." Falsini lightened a little in the early-80s, producing Electra's frisky aerobics anthem Feels Good (Carrots & Beets) – played by everyone from Horse Meat Disco to Aphex Twin – and knocking out a fantastic album of new wave pop in 1983 as the Antennas (check out Just Your Love). Throughout the next decade he produced hours of mind-expanding acid-trance for his Interactive Test label.
Now an excellent compilation focusing on the earlier, more ethereal side of Sensations' Fix, called Music Is Painting In The Air (1974-1977), is released by New York's RVNG Intl, home to recent albums by Julia Holter and Sun Araw. For RVNG label manager Matt Werth, Falsini shares certain qualities with his new labelmates.
"There's something incredibly personal and earnest, though greatly escapist, about Franco's songwriting," he says. Compiled from the original tapes by Falsini and his son Jeyon, the album offers a journey through fluid krautrock, space-age synth work and metaphysical meandering.
Werth has tentative plans for future volumes of Sensations' Fix collections, while Falsini who lives in Florence but has family in Virginia, has recently been spotted jamming with the likes of dreamy LA lo-fi bands Regal Degal and Puro Instinct.
"Franco is an unassuming artist who is turned on by freedom," notes Werth. "What he does next is anyone's guess."
