Take My Breath Away

This is the hotly-anticipated second full-length release from architect, producer, musician and composer, Gui Boratto. A much-needed spot of color amidst the minimal milieu, Gui's mixture of fierce production skills and a blissful pop sensibility have characterized his trajectory to the techno heavyweight before us today. Amidst a rigorous touring schedule and busy family life arises Take My Breath Away. Laced with subtle critique and double-entendre, Gui's philosophical approach is adept at packaging the rough, smooth, bitter and sweet into a number of emotive and ultimately optimistic productions.

Equally a statement of concern and call for solidarity, the title track conveys a sense of scale and immediacy with soaring melodic progressions and pounding bass. Epic and densely constructed, clattering metallic tones escalate to a howling climax before a deep-pulsed drive to close. "Atomic Soda" rasps with gritty, hovering synths and complex rhythms, phase transitioning into a monolithic bass stomp with staccato percussive modulation that was built to move. The bit-crushed melodies of "Colors" enters shimmering dream-pop territory, while "Opus 17" marks Gui's 17th album track, continuing the lineage of his debut with a mixture of droning Cologne, shuffling IDM beats and kaleidoscopic synth textures.

"No Turning Back" jars with uneasy cyclical rhythms, developing a tension that breaks with a chorus as grandiose as it is energetic. Gui's wife Luciana Villanova provides the Midas touch yet again, contributing a stirring vocal reminiscent of her contribution to Gui's anthemic "A Beautiful Life." "Azzura" swings with delicate harmonic shifts, while "Les Enfants" features a tripped-out organ melody and live drum break to continue the brief descent in pace. "Ballroom" is strictly club material, probing with stabbed synth and the hardest kick on the record. Taken deep and destabilized with uneasy melodic tones, it provides a fitting introduction to closer "Eggplant." Patiently progressing from ascendant synth chords to a tightly-wound concoction of frenetic percussion and dissonant harmonic elements, "Eggplant" gathers enough momentum to make a vegetable move.

Take My Breath Away is riddled with profound melody, layers of color, and modern deepness and is addictively danceable. It is also further proof that Boratto is worthy of any and all breathless adulation heaped upon him.