STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

~Walt Whitman~

1 Scene 1
2 Mr. Decay
3 Terminal
4 Gate 7
5 Shebang
6 Chromophobia
7 The Blessing
8 Malá Strana
9 Acróstico
10 Xilo
11 Beautiful Life
12 Hera
13 The Verdict

Download Link

Gui Boratto is a musician from Brazil that I discovered thru a friend.  At first I did not paid much attention to him, but after random plays, I grew quite attached to it.  I went to his myspace page and came across with a personal page with a multi song player and a hell of a long variety of tracks and remixes.  Most of the songs of his "Chromophobia" album are there and that is a must have album for those who like minimalist electro music with lots of discotheque influences.  Mostly instrumental but there's a brief vocal cameo.

This reinnasence man (architect, musician, and producer) creates great atmosphere music, elegant enough for chic lounges and some are danceable enough for any box social.  I must say that music aside, the cover of what seems to be his most recent album, is quite catchy and in a simbiotic way, does present the public with what the sound inside will be.  It's a kaleidoscopic combination of solid colors if that even makes sense.

Regarding the songs, I must say that my favorite is "Beautiful Life", which is also the song from the video I've included.  It's catchy, it has vocals and it has a nice beat to it.  Other tracks such as "The Blessing" and "Xilo" are mellower, perfect for background music when having a nice get together or having a few drinks at a bar.  "Like You (Supermayer Mix)" from another album, goes in the same direction as Beautiful Life.  "Beluga" on the other hand would fall more on the minimal dance song, perfect for those people who love to do remixes and overwhelm it with crap.  The good thing is that he seems to have all of his material available on the myspace page, granted it's just exerpts from his works (mainly  30 seconds to a minute of each track)  but it's enough to determine if one likes it or not.  Minimalist electro/discoteque fans, this recommendation is for you.

http://www.myspace.com/guiboratto
 http://www.guiboratto.com.br

Video for: gui boratto beatifull life

1. Scene 1
2. Mr. Decay
3. Terminal
4. Gate 7
5. Shebang
6. Chromophobia
7. The Blessing
8. Malá Strana
9. Acróstico
10. Xilo
11. Beautiful Life
12. Hera
13. The Verdict

The term "minimal" is thrown around quite loosely nowadays. If it doesn't sound complicated, it isn't. Slap a minimal tag on there and suddenly it isn't questioned. The problem with most "minimal" electronic is that it isn't. It is quite a bit more complicated than it lets on to be, leaving most people to assume otherwise, however on a album like Chromophobia, one could mistake this album as minimal tech-house, but there is more than what is on the surface. Accompanied with a steady beat is an entire world of clicks, saw, static hits, and other earthy sounds which make a nice accompanied mix to the electronics. It soon becomes easy to see as the album progresses the intricacies of the music within the music. The way all sorts of sounds are mixed and sort to make different rhythms ("Gate 7"). Two tracks with two different beats combine to create a wholly new one. While this album isn't near perfect, where is should have ended at the masterpeice and brilliance that "Beautiful Life", it's hard to hate it. We could take a look at the album art for this album, and see Gui's outlook. Simple, solid colored circles, something minimal, combined to make different shapes and colors, complex.

4.0000001/5

download | buy

More from David Batchelor’s Chromophobia:

In the chapter titled “Whitescapes”, Batchelor describes going to a party at the home of an art collector in London. His description of that experience is hauntingly familiar to me, but one that I have never thought through in such explicit detail:

The house looked ordinary enough from the outside: red brick, nineteenth or early twentieth century, substantial but unostentatious. Inside was different. Inside seemed to have no connection with outside. Inside was, in one sense, inside-out, but I only realized that much later. At first, inside looked endless. Endless like an egg must look endless from the inside; endless because seamless, continuous, empty, uninterrupted. Or rather: uninterruptible. There is a difference. Uninterrupted might mean overlooked, passed by, inconspicuous, insignificant. Uninterruptible passes by you, renders you inconspicuous and insignificant…It was a strategic emptiness, but it was also accusatory.

There is a kind of white that is more than white, and this was the kind of white. There is a kind of white that repels everything that is inferior to it, and that is almost everything. This was that kind of white. There is a kind of white that is not created by bleach but that itself is bleach. This was that kind of white. This white was aggressively white.

An emptiness that is accusatory. A white that is compassionless. I know of what he speaks.

The author, David Batchelor, is a sculptor whose work is focused on color (or, because he is British, colour.) He also happens to be an insightful and articulate thinker, and this small book has been feeding my thinking for days.

Batchelor's basic premise is this: "It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished and degraded...As with all prejudices, its manifest form, its loathing, masks a fear: a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable." Drawing from sources that range from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and the philosophic writings of Aristotle, Charles Blanc, Le Corbusier and Roland Barthes among others, the book unmasks our cultural discomfort with colour.

In the process of this uncovering, Batchelor has assembled some memorable references to art and colour. Here's a few I found particularly provocative:

The poet Joachim Gasquet, reporting some remarks made by Cezanne about looking at painting:

Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them...One sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us...an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace...Lose consciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them.

***

Cezanne, it has been argued, subscribed to the idea that a new-born child lives in a world of naive vision where sensations are unmediated and uncorrupted by the 'veil of...interpretation.' The work of the painter was to observe nature as it was beneath this veil, to imagine the world as it was before it had been converted into a network of concepts and objects. This world for Cezanne, was 'patches of colour'; thus 'to paint is to register one's sensations of colour.'

***

Gustave Moreau: 'Note one thing well: you must think through colour, have imagination in it. If you don't have imagination, your colour will never be beautiful. Colour must be thought, imagined, dreamed."

So much more to share from this slender volume. I will do so in upcoming posts.

Sculpture by David Batchelor

gymnophobia- a fear of nudity (about seeing others naked or being seen naked, or both)

Emetophobia- irrational fear of vomiting or being around others who are vomiting, or the vomit itself

Sociophobia - Fear of social gatherings, fear of socializing, fear of embarrassment in social situations that is extremely intrusive and can have markedly debilitating effects on personal and professional relationships.

Aichmophobia - a fear of being touched by a finger or pointed object

Necrophobia/Thantaphobia - fear of the dead or dead things

Allodaxaphobia - Fear of the opinions of other people

Barophobia - Fear of gravity.

Chromophobia - Fear of colors

Dextrophobia - Fear of objects at the right side of the body

Cacophobia: Fear of ugliness

What the heck... people have some strange fears... I understand the clowns... but gravity!? Dude, without gravity we'd all float away and die... If anything a fear of not having gravity would make more sense...people these days...

Gui Boratto is an architect, musician, composer and producer
all at the same time.

His years of vast experience in the music industry
can only prove his worth and the gem of an album chromophobia
which he has created has the most subtle, beautiful electro melodies of its kind.

He's goin to perform @ zouk on 15 Feb at the mainroom so don't you dare miss out.

Its gonna be epic.

What a beautiful life it is with him on the decks.

mp3|Gui Boratto- Beautiful life

Gui Boratto website
Gui Boratto myspace

Secondly, Wilco is expected to stream their highly anticipated (and in my opinion, cursed) album from their site within the next few days. This move is supposedly a way to cut off music pirates before they can leak the album. Personally, I think Warner simply screwed up big time with the people they sent promos out too, and now they're scurrying around to fix their mistake. So, if you're smart you'll keep an eye on Wilcoworld.

Gui Boratto - The Blessing.mp3

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