6: Gui Boratto - Cromophobia

It’s strange how a thing described as ‘minimal’ can sound so maximal. And I can see other weird contradictions in minimal techno, down-tempo chilled songs can also be loud and up-beat, tracks can be void of any emotion or melody, (‘Terminal’), and then full of those things, (‘Acrostico’), within the same album, and all supposedly performed under one style. The tracks on Chromophobia certainly don’t sound minimal, they are full to the brim with clicks, clacks, beeps and bops, a giddying amount of information and at lengths of 6 or more minutes. Which makes me think that maybe the ‘minimal’ refers to the way the sounds are programmed, with normal techno you get broader strokes and bigger beats, whereas with minimal you get truncated hard little bits and pieces, and it’s more about the tone and singularity of those pieces than it is about any overwhelming body-suffusing rush, as you would get in normal techno. But I’m not sure about all that, I don’t have enough knowledge or empathy with techno to really know what I’m on about.

What I do know is that Gui Boratto’s Chromophobia is an excellent album, a mixture of dour, chilly, warm and gorgeousness. It’s one of the first few minimal techno/electronic releases that I am comfortable in calling brilliant, or confident in saying that I know well, hopefully it is a gateway album for me. The title means a fear of colour, and the album certainly starts out that way with the first 5 tracks an expressionless group. Which, as I have mentioned, isn’t a bad thing, the very texture of the components of each song are a joy to listen to, I found myself singling out particular sounds and following their progress with great interest, and they are so busy that there is a lot to keep you occupied, the dourness and chilliness only adds to the fascinating texture. Even so, it is a relief when the two middle tracks ‘Chromophobia’ and ‘The Blessing’ mark a change in tone, (it could start to get wearying listening to that first texture alone for a whole album I feel), the former has a dollop of funkiness to it and a slow analog, feedback-synth sound winding away in the background and coming to the fore near the end of the track. The latter has an orbiting synth and keyboard sound that sounds a lot more like ‘typical’ techno, but in a muted playing-in-the-next-room way, we get the usual bits and bobs littering the front of the track, razor sharp and shiny. After those tracks we get the warmer side of the album, songs are generally shorter and perhaps a little less bursting at the seams. ‘Mala Strana’ is a slow ambient surge, with piano playing, which comes as a bit of a shock when you remember the front of the album. Next is ‘Acrostico’ which continues with the ambience-laden long tones, but the melody here is more pronounced and very positive sounding, gorgeously blissful and content. ‘Xilo’ sounds like a Ms John Soda track sans vocals, ‘Hera’ returns slightly to the former tone of the album, but with a cave-like production and synth pads supplying some melody, ‘The Verdict’ is a bassy meander, with a skittering static beat and a new-wave keyboard riff 2/3rds through.

Special mention, (it’s own new paragraph and all!), must be made of ‘Beautiful Life’, which comes between ‘Xilo’ and ‘Hera’ at the back of the album. This 8 minute song is much more like what I would expect of a piece of music labelled techno. A looping, loping two chord strum that sounds a little like processed guitar serves as the base of the song, with a simple steady beat appearing front and centre, while a keyboard riff (that sounds a bit like Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour De France’ theme) is played over and over. What really makes the song, though, is when these elements fade out and then back in again at about 2 minutes, the beat is somehow harder and more insistent and the guitar-like riff suddenly expands into a chord progression, a soaring fist pumping validating anthem. And then Boratto’s wife sings ‘What a beautiful life, what a beautiful life, what a beautiful life’, with a rising of intonation on the last ‘beautiful life’, a happy and blissful delivery that is obscured by a bit of static or something, which only adds to it’s power. These elements explode and collapse periodically throughout the song, the repetitious and, yes, minimalist quality of the song lend it an implacable propulsion. I can well imagine pogoing like crazy in a dark, sweaty and baking hot club, losing my shit to this life-affirming piece of brilliance.

Well, this is many more words than I was expecting to write about this album, but it obviously made a good impression on me. I feel more confident now about delving into minimal techno/IDM/micro house because I know that I can love an album’s worth of the stuff. I think I’ll be checking out Pantha Du Prince this coming week as someone said that it is like the Gui Boratto album, but with more swing and flexibility.