Guano Padano 2 review

Italian trio Guano Padano, Alessandro Stafana on guitar, Danilo Gallo on bass and Zeno de Rossi on drums, released their “Guano Padano” debut album in 2009. It featured a shimmering display of Ennio Morricone infused soundtracks to exotic landscapes and sultry, mysterious characters. That album featured the likes of Captain Beefheart band member Gary Lucas on guitar, and the mighty Alessandro Alessandroni (the original Morricone whistler) on whistle duties. This latest offering features Italian culture loving Mike Patton on vocal on the villainous “Prairie Fire”, an ominous, siren soaked journey through the underworld. This collection then, has lost none of those early references from their former release, and if anything has built upon them to come up with a further collection of evocative stories from a far-flung territory.

The album “2″ opens with ‘Last Night’ which brings to mind the distant vision of a heat haze blurred traveller, with tantalizing piano lines broken occasionally by cascading castanets. ‘Zebulon’ breaks loose the surf guitar, tremolo arm and chiming bells, as the pace increases over rolling drums. ‘One Man Bank’ slows the pace but never loses the atmosphere, whilst ‘Gran Bazaar’ becomes more reminiscent of Dick Dale or Man or Astroman? in its surf guitar fury.

The tempo and disposition is given a long shot of bourbon on ‘Gumbo’ as the listener lights a cheroot, tips their hat over their eyes, and settles in. ‘Bellavista’ brings a country flavoured edge to the music, bringing finger picking banjo and fiddle into the soup. Just when the listener has begun to think they have understood Guano Padano and their vignettes of sound, ‘Lynch’ brings a mixture of jazz and neo-classical influences, with a hint of the surreal, reminding the poor naive victim of a David Lynch film set piece. Even slices of oriental music cut through tunes such as “Miss Chan”.

The extensive ‘Un Occhio Verso Tokio’ is virtually the soundtrack to a short piece of film in itself, with scenes of poignancy, introspection and joy, all within its eight minute duration. The album closes with the laconic ‘Sleep Walk,’ drifting over soaring lines of steel guitar, and dramatic passages of distortion, percussion and organ....

Full review here

Mike Patton and the Ictus Ensemble - Laborintus II

It must be said from the outset that anyone not familiar with Mike Patton and his breathtakingly diverse body of work would do well to investigate the back catalogue and familiarise themselves with the artist who has successfully taken on any number of disparate projects.

In 2010 Patton, together with the Brussels based Ictus Ensemble andNederlands Kamerkoor, performed “Laborintus II” by Italian composerLuciano Berio at the Holland Festival. Berio created the piece in 1965, to mark the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante, basing it on the poem “Laborintus” by Edoardo Sanguineti, and concerning itself with the “timelessness of love and mourning”.

The chamber opera had its Dutch premier at the Holland Festival in 1972, and featured a set that compromised, amongst other items, a giant blow up doll and car tyres. Lieven Bertels, former artistic director of the Holland Festival, described bringing the piece to a new, younger audience, and incorporating narration from Mike Patton, who, quite rightly, has the versatility and open mindedness to tackle such an assignment, and has openly paid tribute to Italian composers in his work in the past.

It is said that Berio composed “Laborintus II” whilst teaching in California, and was listening at the time to jazz, pop and folk music. Careful listening to all three sections of the piece featured on this recording would suggest that these influences have been skilfully woven in to the texture of the set....

Read the full review at This Is Not A Scene

Mike Patton - The Solitude of Prime Numbers review

http://www.thisisnotascene.com/2011/mike-patton-the-solitude-of-prime-numbers/

Based on the book by physicist Paolo Giordano, the film “La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi” directed by Saverio Costanzo in 2010, tells the story of Mattia (who is a mathematical prodigy) and Alice, whose tale of traumatised childhood and teenage isolation, forms the basis of the title of the film, they are like “twin primes”, feeling alone, but close to each other, detached by an even number, their lives run in parallel, but never intersect. In the book, Giordano himself explains, “Prime numbers are divisible only by one and themselves. They stand in their place defiantly in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed in between two others, but a step further on than the rest...”. Titled “Music from the Film and Inspired by the Book”, Mike Patton has perfectly captured the feeling of isolation and introspection that informs the storyline.....