Laborintus II (album)

Laborintus II is an album by the Belgian orchestra Ictus Ensemble, the vocal group Nederlands Kamerkoor, and the American vocalist Mike Patton, which was recorded live at the 2010 Holland Festival.

The album is a recording of the 1965 work of the same name by Italian composer Luciano Berio, whose composition employs elements of jazz and electronic music.

[4] In addition to Sanguineti's own poetry, which is based on themes found in Dante's Divina Commedia, Convivio and La Vita Nuova, the work uses excerpts from the Bible and the writings of poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

"[2] Members of the Dutch choir Nederlands Kamerkoor, who performed on the recording, have also cited usury as a key theme in the work, and described the composition as "an indictment against the practice".

Solos 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.

[4] Laborintus II uses both traditional percussion instruments and electronic sounds, and their interplay serves, according to Jurek, to "erect musical and textural architectures, then disassemble them quickly".

Club considered the recording to be "challenging, uncompromising, and bordering on inaccessible", but credited it with "hidden payoffs" to reward repeated hearings, including "haunting" and "wraithlike" arrangements.

[10] AllMusic—while highlighting that Laborintus II was difficult to grasp at first, by virtue of being a recording of theatrical music—described the album as "a very nearly dazzling endeavor that rewards patience mightily".

[4] Consequence of Sound's Carson O'Shoney called it "unlike anything else you’ve ever heard",[13] noting that the music may need more than one hearing to be appreciated, and that it "runs the gauntlet from quiet, jazzy atmospherics to brazen, unsettling primal noise".

[16] The complex nature of the piece was summarised by Magnet magazine, whose reviewer felt that it was "hard not to respect Patton's creative adventurousness, but sweet Jesus, the gulf between admiration and enjoyment of one of his projects has never been so wide".

A man in a red suit standing in front of a microphone stand, with one arm raised
Patton (pictured) and Ictus Ensemble performed Laborintus II live in 2010.