- It's hard to define exactly what makes a club night work. For me, though, these are the key ingredients: A discerning, friendly crowd, a great venue (with an excellent sound system) and a spot-on music policy. Retox has this formula down. Which is rather unfortunate, actually, as it's on a Sunday. (Ho hum, the plight of a working techno-head.) The music policy on this night unearthed São Paulo's Gui Boratto, one of my favourite producers, making me a little apprehensive that it might not meet my huge expectations. Luckily, it was needless PPA (Pre-Party Anxiety): This was a truly incredible night.
I arrived at 11.30, anticipating immense queues, but after swiftly navigating the security at the entrance I discovered that, unsurprisingly, Sosho was still pretty empty. However with a choice set of tech-house already being pumped out of the Funktion 1 rig and no queues for the cloakroom, bar or smoking area I couldn't complain. After half-an-hour or so, the club began to fill up, and on a trip to the smoking area I saw that the queue was now reaching the expected epic proportions. (Smokers tip: smoke at the beginning of the night at Retox, otherwise you'll have to tolerate lengthy queues to get through the two sound doors, with despotic security guards exercising their modicum of power and letting only a few in and out at a time.)
Photo credit: Nick Ensing
Back inside, some familiar faces were popping up, although there weren't as many of the Retox regulars there as usual (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and the set was taking on more of a heavier techno flavour, with at one point (appropriately) the quintessential Kompakt techno beats of Aril Brikkha's "Berghain" dropped into the mix. The odd house tune lightened the set, although the interjection of occasional nu-disco tracks felt somewhat incongruous and disrupted the flow.
I'd heard that Boratto would be on at 1 o'clock and this was indeed when he first appeared and began to set up his equipment. Upon sighting the diminutive Brazilian, there was absolutely no moving me, despite a friend's repeated attempts to get me downstairs to check out Wildlife and Live Tech Rebelz; I was determined not to miss a second of his set. It seemed many others had the same idea—the excitement in the club was palpable—and there was a constant stream of people craning their heads over the DJ booth to check out Boratto setting up his Lemur and Monome controllers. By this point Sosho was bulging at its seams—I've rarely seen such a good turn-out.
Photo credit: Nick Ensing
At around 2 o'clock Boratto finally started his live set. Earlier that night, a friend and I discussed how when you're really loving a set, you lose the capacity to dance and end up in a half-squat with your arms out in front of you and eyes turned upwards in some kind of ritualistic obeisance to the music. We spent most of his set in this position. Despite being the UK pre-launch of Take My Breath Away, a number of classics such as "Arquipélago," "Terminal" and "The Blessing," were dropped amidst new material, and a spliced and evolved "Beautiful Life" made a rare mid-set appearance blended with swooping synths. Suitably atmospheric lighting accompanied the shifting moods from the lighter ambient tracks, to the darker minimal and techno to euphoric tech-house, providing an excellent visual backdrop.
Having not heard enough of the new material and with the variance of live sets from studio productions, it was hard to tell whether the new album is as good as the first. What was evident though, was that Boratto's talent as a live producer has not lessened in the slightest. After two hours of intricately layered soundscapes, Boratto ended the set with an ambient finale to the applause of an ecstatic crowd.