# Is there another work like Berio's Laborintus II (electronic sounds)?



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I love rock and I love a raw, screaming electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix's. Not only the guitar is sometimes hated for being a sexist symbol for the musician's erection, especially when Jimi is playing it can even sound like an orgasm (listen e.g. to the intro of Power of Soul in the version on the album Band of Gypsies). BTW, I think the charm of Bruch's Violin Concerto is that here the violin also sounds raw and orgastic/explosive... I hate the synthesizer - which device came partly in vogue in pop since especially the eighties because the guitar was so 'sexist' - because it's sound is the exact opposite of the electric (overdriven) guitar: totally sterile and sexless. The synthesizer produces sound without 'soul' and therefore more easily produces musical landscapes rather than emotion.

I don't know anything about the technical aspects but one reads that precursors of the synthesizer (simple sine wave generators or so?) were employed by avant garde composers like Stockhausen to produce the earliest 'electronic music'. Now I love the sound of these early synthesizers though! I love Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge and actually Berio's Laborintus II is my favorite piece of the 20th century! You can hear that the electronic device employed by Stockhausen and Berio in these works is of the same type, though Stockhausen seems to especially like a more friendly crackling sound (like fire burning) or a watery sound (like unclogging the drain with a plunger): Berio also gets a more screaming sound out of it which I love very much (like a pinball machine in overdrive). I am talking about the electronic sounds you hear towards 4'00:






I love to hear more works like Laborintus II, especially with the kind of agressive electronic sounds that Berio employs in it. Maybe only Berio has produced such works (his Omaggio a Joyce comes close) but I am very interested in your recommendations (and/or your comments on these electronic sounds in general)!


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I'd recommend this, based more on your use of the word aggressive than anything (apparently this is part of a larger work called De Natura Sonorum).






I don't know that the sounds have quite that same raw quality you're talking about, or if they were produced on a similar machine.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I don't know how familiar you are with Stockhausen's other stuff, but for something like a screeching electric guitar I'm pretty sure this is the closest thing you'll find (from Kontakte).


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Thanks, Clairvoyance Enough, I like those two pieces of music very much, especially Stockhausen's Kontakte!


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