gui boratto: pentagram

Gui Boratto's breakthrough full-length debut Chromophobia was released in 2007. As to what its title suggests, he shook up the techno game with a contrast of lushly colored minimal grooves and melody. Four albums in and countless EPs and remixes under his belt, the Brazilian producer's unique savoir-faire in carving out a functional album out of diversely routed singles and features is back at it on his fifth studio album, Pentagram. Here Gui Boratto lays down a nuanced 12-track narrative that reinvigorates his signature sound into a refreshingly different perspective that feels all too familiar -- including the return of "Beautiful Life" vocalist (and Gui Boratto's wife) Luciana Villanova on the single "Overload". Through his signature kaleidoscopic approach, Boratto delivers an album built as a far-reaching hub-and-spoke system, broadly inclusive as can be. From the opening cut, "The Walker" -- hot on the trail of Tears For Fears Elemental (1993), one of Boratto's "favourite 80's bands" -- to the hi-NRG euphoria of "Forgotten" and its pounding tech alter ego "Forgive Me". "I was going into two different directions", Boratto says; "the typical 'indie- electronic-rock' Boratto kind of production like 'It's Majik' or 'Like You' and a much more techno approach." The Brazilian producer further embraces the pop-friendly essence of his past work on tracks like "The Phoenix", featuring vocalist Nathan Berger, and "Overload", both melding acidulous synth lines with laser-precise breaks, vox hooks and drops calibrated for extended radio and club use, although sieved through his distinctive rainbow-hued musical prism. For the symbolists out there, the album's pared-down closer "618" duration accidentally happens to equate the proportions of the said pentagram. "Coincidence?" Boratto questions, and capsulizes, "not so ufanista and supporter of Brazilian neo-concretism, but I guess the Brazilian sculptor Lygia Clark also inspired me a lot. Not the meaning of her sculptures, but the shape of the hinge of most of her work." Whereas "Spur" (a field-tested 808 and 909-heavy "purist track") and "Alcazar" are sheer smooth-edged four-to-the-floor epics, the album also shares its lot of startling moments, such as with the John Barry-esque "Scene 2" and its refined string-laden buildup; or with "Hallucination" (feat B.T.), and the further James Holden-ish title-track "Pentagram". Pentagram, in its entirety, is alive and definitely just as manifold and hopeful as its architectonics are the stuff of science and dreams all at once.