Laborintus II

Laborintus II
Live album by Mike Patton and Ictus Ensemble
Released	July 10, 2012
Recorded	June 18, 2010
Length	32:09
Language	Italian, English[5]
Label	Ipecac Recordings (IPC-133)
Producer	Mike Patton, Greg Werckman, Lieven Bertels, Jean-Luc Plouvier
Mike Patton chronology
The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2011) Laborintus II (2012) —

Laborintus II is a 2012 album by Belgian orchestra Ictus Ensemble, the vocal group Nederlands Kamerkoor and American vocalist Mike Patton. It is a recording of the 1965 work of the same name by Italian composer Luciano Berio, which in turn featured lyrics taken from fellow Italian Edoardo Sanguineti's 1956 poem Laborintus. The performance was recorded live at the 2010 Holland Festival.

Berio's composition has been described as combining elements of jazz and electronic music, while its libretto borrows elements from the works of poets Dante Alighieri, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, in addition to Sanguineti's work. Berio has named "memory, death and usury" as the work's main concerns, believing these to also be themes present in the works of Alighieri.^[6]

Released on July 10, 2012, the album debuted at number 23 on the American Billboard Classic Albums chart. It has received mixed reviews from critics, with most responses highlighting its challenging and free-form composition.

Production

Laborintus II is a recording of Luciano Berio's 1965 composition of the same name. Berio had written the piece for the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's birth, and had incorporated elements of Edoardo Sanguineti's 1956 poem Laborintus as its lyrics. The original poem has been described by allMusic's Thom Jurek as speaking of "the timelessness of love and mourning, while acting as a critique of the commoditization of all things".^[3] In addition to Sanguineti's poetry—itself based on themes found in Alighieri's Divina Commedia, Convivio and La Vita Nuova—the piece uses excerpts from the Bible and the writings of poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Musically, Laborintus II incorporates elements of jazz and electronic music while evoking the compositions of Italian opera composer Claudio Monteverdi.^[7]

Laborintus II's main structure is what Berio called the "catalogue, in its medieval meaning"—an enumerated list in the style of Alighieri, using the poet's themes of "memory, death and usury".^[6] Members of the Dutch choir Nederlands Kamerkoor, who performed on the recording, have also cited usury as a key theme in the piece, describing the composition as "an indictment against the practice".^{[nb 1][1]} Berio considered some elements of Laborintus II to be "autonomous", capable of standing on their own in addition to being component parts of the full work; the composer considered this to be applicable to both the libretto and the musical score, which he saw as extensions of each other.^[6] Berio had performed the piece at the Holland Festival in 1973; this recital included car tyres and a blow-up doll on stage.^[8]

The album was recorded live at the Holland Festival on June 18, 2010, in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The work was performed by Mike Patton and Belgium's Ictus Ensemble, and was conducted by Georges-Elie Octors. Solo pieces were performed by Ictus Ensemble clarinetist Dirk Descheemaeker, trumpeter Loïc Dumoulin, trombonist Michel Massot, double bass player Géry Cambier, and percussionists Michael Weilacher and Gerrit Nulens.^[9] Nederlands Kamerkoor provided the choral accompaniments to the performance. The album marks only the third recording of the composition to have been released since it was first broadcast on French radio by Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française.^[10] Speaking of the piece, Patton has said "I can listen to Berio and Nono as easily as I can to Morricone but like all modern music of Italy, it is unfortunately marginalized [...] Maybe because of the language barrier, maybe because it’s not easily understood. Berio, who was teaching in California when he wrote this piece, was listening to jazz, pop and folk music and incorporated all of it in his works without prejudice".^[8]

Composition

Laborintus II features a libretto by Edoardo Sanguineti (left), based on the work of Dante Alighieri (right, portrait by Giotto).

Laborintus II combines orchestral, choral and spoken word elements across its three parts.^[11][4] Patton's spoken-word narration is mostly in Italian, with some sections delivered in English;^[5] his words are alternately whispered, declared or shouted and carry a variety of emotional tones as the piece progresses. The choral parts are given in response to the narration, and consist of both unified chanting and disjointed arguing—the latter of which serves to increase the piece's tense atmosphere.^[3] This is accompanied by three female vocalists^[11] whose voices range from soprano singing^[4] to "cooing" and "howling".^[3]

Musically, the piece incorporates elements of jazz^[7][11] and 20th-century avant-garde music.^[4] The instruments in the orchestra frequently interrupt both each other and the female voices,^[11] while sections of the composition seem as though they are improvised.^[3] Laborintus II makes use of both traditional percussion instruments and electronic rhythms^[3]—the latter of which have been compared to the compositions of Raymond Scott^[11]—whose interplay serves to "erect musical and textural architectures, then disassemble them quickly".^[3]

	Untitled A sample of Patton's narration over the free-form orchestral composition
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The first part of the composition features the three female voices creating a "mournful" tone while the orchestra plays recurring musical passages;^[5] this changes to a discordant crescendo in the second part,^[5] marked by Patton's narration becoming increasingly shouted and the orchestral accompaniment more "hyperactive".^[11] The third and final part returns to a more "tranquil" tone, focussing on drums and jazz woodwind instruments.^[5]

Track listing

Personnel

Patton (pictured) and Ictus Ensemble performed Laborintus II live in 2010.

Release and reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	58[12]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllRovi	[3]
The A.V. Club	B−[5]
Consequence of Sound	[13]
PopMatters	[11]
Spin	[14]
Sputnikmusic	[4]

Laborintus II was released on July 10, 2012 through Patton's record label Ipecac Recordings.^[3] In the United States, the album debuted on the Billboard Classic Albums chart on August 11, 2012, placing at number 23.^[15]

The album has received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Metacritic has awarded it an average score of 58 out of 100, based on eight reviews.^[12] Writing for The A.V. Club, Chris Mincher rated the album a B−, calling it "challenging, uncompromising, and bordering on inaccessible".^[5] Mincher felt that the album was abstract and difficult, but contained "hidden payoffs" to reward repeated listens; he also called Patton's arrangements "haunting" and "wraithlike".^[5] AllRovi's Thom Jurek rated the album three-and-a-half stars out of five, describing it as "a very nearly dazzling endeavor that rewards patience mightily".^[3] Jurek felt that Laborintus II was difficult to grasp at first, by virtue of being a recording of theatrical music, but praised the performance of Ictus Ensemble. He cited their "bracing freshness and mischievous glee".^[3] Eli Kleman of Sputnikmusic rated it 3.5 out of 5, finding it "fascinating if not unwieldy".^[4] Kleman felt that Laborintus II was perhaps Patton's most ambitious album to date, but noted that the musician has previously produced similarly avant-garde records in the past. Kleman described the end result as "somber, beautiful, and ominous, but always affecting".^[4]

Max Feldman of PopMatters awarded Laborintus II a rating of seven out of ten, finding it to be "challenging" and "exhausting".^[11] Feldman noted the composition's free jazz elements, comparing it to the 1970 Miles Davis album Bitches Brew. He further felt that the album emphasised its unpredictable nature.^[11] Consequence of Sound's Carson O'Shoney rated the album three stars out of five, calling it "unlike anything else you’ve ever heard".^[13] O'Shoney felt that the album deserved several plays to grow upon the listener, adding that it "runs the gauntlet from quiet, jazzy atmospherics to brazen, unsettling primal noise".^[13] A review for Q magazine magazine described Laborintus II as "tedious", finding the album to be disorienting;^[16] while Spin's Christopher R. Weingarten rated it 7 out of 10, calling it an "orchestra/tape collision crisper".^[14]

Notes

1. ↑ Original text—"Het libretto kan gelezen worden als een aanklacht tegen de praktijk van woekeraars".^[1]
2. ↑ The three tracks are not titled on the album itself,^[2] and have variously been given as "untitled"^[3] or "Part 1", "Part 2" and "Part 3" respectively.^[4]

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Rossi, Melissa; Bertels, Lieven; Plouvier, Jean-Luc (2012). Laborintus II (booklet). Mike Patton and Ictus Ensemble. Alameda, California: Ipecac Recordings. IPC-133.