Hello, My Name Is Gui Boratto (Live Show)
Roxanne Parlour
Friday February 19, 2010
The eclectically populated elevator grinds to its jerky halt, and the rusty doors shudder open. A number of my momentary brethren spill out of our mechanical womb, (footballers, Swedish backpackers, and drunk girls mostly) and swarm out into a sea of overzealously gyrating hips and pumping shoulders. The resounding ‘ding’ of the closing doors suffocates the undeniable jam being blasted from the makeshift stage, and the last, most emotional remnants of some skinny guy covering ‘Mr Brightside’ are cruelly ripped from our ears. That was Charltons, the karaoke bar beneath Roxanne. It's rad, but it also manages to send a disquieting chill up my spine. Continuing upwards, the doors force themselves open once more. This time however, the dull thuds eventually give way to warm electronic flutters, and it’s Rodriguez Jr’s ‘Lila’ that trickles into our vessel, rather than a butchered Killers chorus. Judging by the reactions of the other passengers, it’s an agreeably received substitution, and everyone excitably heads out into a vastly different level of the canopy than the one below, in anticipation of a meeting with Brazil’s mainstay of minimal, Gui Boratto
Given that it’s about midnight, the rooms are alarmingly sparse. A couple of overly stimulated gentlemen are seemingly having dance floor exorcisms, but there are few other signs of life. The smoking area is three times more packed than anywhere else. A casual glance around quickly converts alarm to a Charlton’s-esque synthesis of humorousness and anxiety. The Kompakt Gui Boratto (both by label and physical stature) is standing on stage, subtly bopping up and down, while casually prodding buttons and tapping pads. This couldn’t possibly be the main set. Thankfully, the Brazilian maestro steps down after apparently running through a last minute sound check, and I puff myself into hyperventilation via two hundred thousand rapid sighs of relief.
Over the next hour and a half, a diverse, but highly appreciative crowd steadily pours into Roxanne by the elevator load, and the anticipation for Gui Boratto’s (real) show grows similarly. The set times are somewhat annoyingly shuffled around like our all-too-eager friends from the sound check, but an obliging Dave Pham and Mike Callander ensure that punters don’t become too restless, keeping the energy up through tribal laced minimal tech in an entertaining and flawlessly executed versus set.
However, from even the earliest flickers of his opening ‘Azzura’, it is the undeniably charming Gui Boratto who runs the show. In a two hour set that perfectly reflected the apparent diversity of those in attendance, the charismatic Boratto seamlessly moved through a myriad of electronic soundscapes and styles, feeding the crowd all the favourites they had undoubtedly come to see, whilst revealing an impressive back catalogue of tracks from both Chromophobia and the newer Take My Breath Away. Most prominently on display were the pop influenced melodies and danceable indie hues of the aforementioned ‘Azzura’, the breathy melancholy of his new Massive Attack remix ‘Paradise Circus’, the anthemic excesses of a sweat-soaked ‘No Turning Back’ (the chorus of which would’ve gone down well at Charltons, such was the mass karaoke on display) and the hug-your-mates-at-the-end-of-the-show style climaxes and euphoria of the ‘Beautiful Life’. Of course, there were moments for the minimal purist as well, with each of the more mainstream sing-alongs being intelligently accentuated by and deftly intertwined with one another via a number of bouncy live edits and loops, signifying Boratto’s possession of a refreshing live musical ability that is sadly rare in electronic and production circles.
Alas the last ecstatic moments of the finale, ‘Beautiful Life’ began to fade and powerful emotional embraces were severed. It was time once again to make the decent back down to reality. I took the stairs.
Elliott Grigg