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Gui Boratto Tells Stories
By Brock Thiessen
In the world of superstar DJs, Gui Boratto is hardly typical. He's humble, avoids drugs, and works best after a good, early morning breakfast. And yet, this Brazilian has become one minimal techno's heaviest hitters, and inked a deal with Germany's prestigious Kompakt label. The ascent started with Boratto's 2007 breakthrough album Chromophobia but reaches new heights with Take My Breath Away, a record that ditches the angular, dark room floor burners for a warmer, sun-baked ambiance that's laid-back but hardly simple.
"I tried to make this album like a book, where there is a definite beginning, middle and end," Boratto says. "I didn't want to just choose 11 club tracks and throw them on an album because, to me, that's not an album. I try to make different nuances — to make the listen interesting from when you press play until the end of the story."
Boratto's tracks shift from abstract to sentimental to blissed-out euphoria, sounding as fit for the dance floor as they are the hi-fi. The producer's heavy-lidded trance and mid-tempo tension still take centre stage, but now with more real bass, synth and guitar entering the digital fray. Boratto calls it a "more mature" direction and one he hopes makes Take My Breath Away a welcomed evolution, not a departure.
"We change a bit every day and this album is more me today, where I'm more into melodies and textures rather than rhythms like I was on Chromophobia," he says. "In a way, the whole record is meant to sound more organic and more humanized. There are a lot of different moods in this album, and music is the only thing that has the power to make you feel happy or sad for no reason; it's just melodies and harmonies that are changing your emotions. And hopefully, this record gives balance."
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Dan Deacon's High Art Dance Party
 Getting in touch with Baltimore electronic experimentalist Dan Deacon has proven nearly impossible. In the last three years, Deacon has exploded in popularity, winning over fans and critics worldwide with his 2007 album Spiderman of the Rings, regularly hosting shows and dance parties with his Baltimore art collective Wham City, and getting crowds involved worldwide with his highly interactive live show....Read More
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Obits are Reborn
 Even though he played guitar and sang in two esteemed underground rock'n'roll bands, Rick Froberg isn't dwelling in the past with Obits. Froberg's powerful voice and post-punk zeal first transcended his native San Diego with Drive Like Jehu, the legendary band he commandeered in the early '90s with old friend John Reis (Rocket From the Crypt, the Night Marchers)....Read More
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Classified Is Satisfied
 For some underground artists, signing to a major label is perhaps the most important goal of their careers. Long-shot fantasies suddenly aren't that long and the superfluous side of the music industry that was once relegated to jokes and afterthoughts — fame, fortune, a gaggle of gals with questionable morals — can seem curiously within reach. For Classified, signing to a major just seemed like the most effective way to get his music heard by a few more people....Read More
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Extra Time For Extra Golden
 Three years ago, Extra Golden's debut Ok Oyot System seemed like a stroke of luck. A hasty recording session in a tin-roofed shack between two Americans and two Kenyans yielded a great electric guitar communion between Africa and America. Surprisingly, Extra Golden is still going two albums later, even though its members still live thousands of miles apart....Read More
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The Burning Hell's Apocalypso
 It was only a matter of time before a band called the Burning Hell wrote a song called "When The World Ends." Singer-songwriter Mathias Kom is a cheerful fatalist who can always be counted on to make the best of a morbid situation, putting his pen to work on songs about birth and death and everything else that composes life's rich pageant....Read More
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Long Live Underground Kingz
 With Pimp C passed, Bun B soldiers on, keeping the UGK name alive with UGK 4 Life, the Texan rap duo's sixth and final album. Chad "Pimp C" Butler, an accomplished and outspoken rapper-producer, died on Dec. 4, 2007, due to complications from his sleep apnea condition....Read More
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