Italyan, rum casusu çikti is the second studio album by Italian rock band Elio e le Storie Tese. The album title is in Turkish and means "Italian (man) found out to be a Greek spy". This phrase appeared in a Turkish newspaper after Massimo Rana, an Italian photographer, who was believed to be a spy, was arrested in 1991 by the Turkish-Cypriot police. It is considered one of the band's finest works by audiences and reviewers alike.

Songs

As with other albums by the band, İtalyan, rum casusu çikti features a number of samples, quotes and references to other songs and genres, as well as the band's usual mix of serious and comedy-oriented lyrics.

Track listing

Cover artwork

The artwork, partially based on a stock photo and digitally re-touched by CGI artist Alex Koban, ironically reverses a concept taken from the 1984 spy-parody film Top Secret!, in keeping with the spy theme in the album title. In the film, three spies masquerade themselves as a cow in order to spy on a military installation, but the film itself shows a real cow wearing wellies on its legs; the album, instead, features a plainly fake legless cow, made out of cardboard, with a pair of real human feet and legs emerging from it. The limbs were originally meant to be Elio's, but Koban refused to use them as they were very hairy; his choice went instead to Giancarlo Bozzo, founder and co-owner of Milan's stand-up comedy club Zelig, where the band had its debut. Later on, Bozzo's feet were digitally replaced with Faso's.

Personnel

Guest musicians

Footnotes