Brazilian electronic producer Gui Boratto got his start working in advertising and making pop music, two worlds where superficial sheen and polish are of paramount importance. It's easy to see the connection from his earlier life to his current solo work, for Kompakt and other labels: His tracks are vibrant, ear-pleasing candy of the most licensable order, and his full-length albums have thus far stuck to a fairly simple formula: one or two big, dreamy, tastefully sun-kissed vocal house anthems selling the surrounding tangents into minimal techno.
If that doesn't sound like a golden ratio, you're right: While Gui Boratto's Chromophobia and Take My Breath Away are both solid, sometimes spectacular albums, you're most likely to have Boratto saved in your mp3 locker as a singles artist, best known for evaporating vocal tracks like "Beautiful Life", "Like You", and "No Turning Back", or for his subtly percolating *Total 7 *instrumental "Arquipélago". But while those remain his most breathtaking songs, such an appraisal does disservice to his deeper album material-- tracks that, once you stop hunting for the car-commercial hook, make for some pretty enveloping listening.
III, Boratto's sensibly titled third album for Kompakt, follows the same pattern as his previous records, but it also pushes that balance between pop standouts and functionalist tracks further. Here, the vocal tracks are buried, both in terms of mixing and album sequencing, and instead the record emphasizes Boratto's range as a producer.
There is some range, and some real technical skill on display here. Album opener "Galuchat" comes on with a filter-swaddled melody that sounds borrowed from an early-2000s Morr Music artist-- Lali Puna, perhaps-- and which all but invites you to imagine a lyric over it. "Stems from Hell" and "The Drill" demonstrate Boratto's facility with darker, steamier techno-- all pneumatic pumping rhythms, ominous melodies, and grain-spitting synth sounds.
Surprisingly, two of the vocal tracks here, "Striker" and "Destination: Education", hew to a similar mood, more underlit-corner-of-warehouse nightclub than roof-down, coastal-highway cruising. More so than on any other Gui Boratto album, the moments of brightness seem to lift off out of a largely melancholy gray. It all culminates with the soft, steady thaw of "This Is Not the End", the best vocal track here, but also a rather Gui-by-numbers retread of its superior pop predecessors.
So if you're not already sold on Boratto as an album-length artist, III isn't likely to get you there. Worse than that, though, it doesn't have any a single exceptional track to add to the singles pile. Instead, it's another merely fine, expectation-meeting entry into Boratto's discography, a stopgap until the next knockout single comes along.
