Exclusive! Phanganist Meets Dj Gui Boratto

Phanganist were lucky enough to be invited to Miguel Matoz’s home to meet with the legendary Gui Boratto. Gui and Miguel are working together on some music at the moment which is a very exciting thing!
Here’s what he had to say...

Hello Gui so are you enjoying your first visit to Koh Phangan?
I’m enjoying it a lot. There’s no airport so it’s a bit more difficult to get here, it reminds me of the north east of Brazil, we have a little paradox where there are amazing resorts then nature with not really much infrastructure and I love that.

There are some places for example which I compare to here which are not allowed to have pavement.

We arrived and it was pure smiles, so much fun, the food and everything, we just got a little simple fish, I don’t need too much to be happy.

Next time I will stay a week, people said I should come here and they were all correct.

What was the initial spark that made you want to be a Dj?
I don’t consider myself as a Dj, I’m a musician, I play piano and guitar. First of all I am a composer. When I was ten I was in a band. There was a time in my life I was listening to bands like New Water, Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, The Smiths, typical 80’s bands. Everyone who’s forty will know, I will be forty two next year and I used to listen to those type of bands.

We started to get sick of basic rock formations though, not only me but people of my age started to flirt with synthesizers.

I was forced to study piano, my mum said that if I wanted to play guitar I needed to learn piano. I was very into the keys, I was really happy to have the different textures of the instrument.

Around 1991 the drummer for the band went to medicine school so we had no drummer, this is when I got my first sequencers which I started to program. Instead of rehearsing with the band I started with my own music. At that time everything was Techno Pop, and of course the first House music from Chicago.

I believe music is much more when there are no borders. I love to mix and use different technologies to achieve a certain idea, production, arrangement and the style.

So when you’re playing a gig what exactly do you use?
I have my own files and it depends on the equipment. I was doing a very compact live set up after using very heavy stuff two years ago.

I have a live performance called ‘Machines’ with no laptop. Now I’m back on the simple and easy drum machine, program pattern with two interfaces and a computer to handle the long files.

My music is not one note techno songs. It’s very radiophonic and has a pop structure, even instrumentals have a verse, chorus, verse which is a typical pop structure.

So I mess with the patterns and programming with the long files, especially harmony files.

I try to recreate the things I do in the studio. When I was doin ‘Machines’ I was improvising so much that people said ‘you weren’t playing this tune’ but only real fans could recognise what I was doing.

In the end I was travelling with so much weight that I decided that I will probably now just use half. Now I use just a laptop and three controllers, I’ll probably get somewhere in the middle in 2016.

I get ideas when I do that kind of improvisation, I think I wish I could of recorded that because I mix and tweak the sound.

What do you think are the most exciting styles of music at the moment?
I don’t have a crystal ball, I believe in the mixture of things and that what is next is what people need.

For example, EDM was what people needed, we were getting bored with one note, boring Techno but EDM was too much, the problem is integrity.

I have cheesy songs and I’m into that, I’m introspective and I know the formula but I just really want to feel very comfortable.

I want my daughter to feel proud of what I’ve done in the last two decades.

People want to get back to small places again, there are too many huge giant festivals and it gets very exhaustive to do that. It’s like you’re going to war with your water, sunblock, you get home dirty, even the young people think this! I think it’s a cycle, I think people want to get back to small, more comfortable clubs.

There’s some really, really good Techno, Trance and even Drum and Bass but I don’t want to be stuck in one genre, my taste is much wider.

What are your projects for the coming year?
I’ve been playing a lot in the last ten years, I’m doing between five or six tours per year but I’m not that, I am a studio guy.

Finally in 2013 I started my label which is a platform for music. 

There was a point when Michael Myer, the owner of Kompakt said ‘don’t you want a label to get these guys?’ (there were many guys from South America with good music) but I was really focused on my music then.

Last year I released my album, did collaborations and mixes, mixing more like an engineer and now I’m very happy again to be back in the studio.

We have released another two guys called ‘Shadow Movement’, these guys are so young like twenty two and twenty four. They did their first tour this year in the summer with me, they would warm up or finish the night, I’m very focused on the label. My biggest project for 2016, I have a friend, a kind of old friend that put me in contact with Marcus Riley, second generation of Bossa Nova who did many amazing songs. They came up with the idea to re work basically to remix them all of their masterpieces, I said I don’t want that, the media don’t want that, my idea is to create something new. I offer the opposite, I’m more the new generation and I work with the electronic elements and a different approach than they are used to. So I proposed to make a new song, so we will be baptised as Markus Riley, Roberto Menescal and Gui Boratto with a really special picture vinyl, I’m very excited and only time will tell.

What do you think of the Phangan scene from what you’ve heard or know?
From my experience and stories I have heard, one old friend was saying about the plankton and the Full Moon party and the typical drinks, don’t do this, you can do that, warnings and related things, the same kind of advice as if you’re going to Brazil and you ask two or three times what will you see and expect. I don’t have a clue really because there’s no festivals here. I guess that here the most important thing is the environment, not a circuit of names or clubs etc but the parties are nice because of the whole package.

The music must match the whole scene, I like that, I really do. Most of my Dj friends play in Singapore or Beijing but I haven’t heard anyone say about this place yet, people come here for yoga and hippy things.