Review
Genre and Mood
Massive Attack and Gui Boratto’s Paradise Circus - Gui Boratto Remix, as the yearbook names it, takes a dark, slow trip-hop song into electronic club music without losing its shadow. The Fader heard it as tense, the sound of a band working on their nerves: dark, haunting and, over seven and a half minutes, intense.
Song Summary
Paradise Circus is a song from Heligoland, Massive Attack’s fifth studio album, released by Virgin Records on 8 February 2010. Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star sings it and shares the writing with Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall, Stew Jackson and Dan Brown. According to Songfacts, nobody in the band ever met her. Boratto’s remix was circulating by the month of the album’s release, and this recording is the 7:41 cut that the Tarifa Records compilation Madrid Fashion Week issued in 2011.
Musical Breakdown
Main Section
No review we found walks through this remix passage by passage, so this page describes less than usual. What the sources do say: The Fader found Boratto an unexpected choice for a song carried by Sandoval’s slow, velvety vocal, and heard the result as unsettled and on edge; Resident Advisor compared it to the work of the Danish producer Trentemøller. Listen for her unhurried voice inside a production built for a longer arc.
Concepts in Focus
A remix reworks the parts of a recording into a new version, usually by another producer. The song and voice are Massive Attack’s and Sandoval’s; the version is the Brazilian producer’s, and Resident Advisor judged it better than the original.
One remix can itself exist as several recordings, which is why the alternate version matters. Heligoland’s Amazon extended edition carries the remix at 8:07, the Heligoland Remix EP added a Gui Boratto dub, and the Madrid Fashion Week compilation has this 7:41 cut. They are one remix in different lengths; this page is about the yearbook’s.
The song’s second life came through the soundtrack. Paradise Circus became the theme of the BBC drama Luther, and the Boratto remix was used in Lincoln MKX commercials in the United States in the autumn of 2010. MusicBrainz also lists the remix on the soundtrack album of the 2012 film Savages.
Artistic Context
Massive Attack, from Bristol, recorded Heligoland between 2005 and 2009, with Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja as its main producers. Gui Boratto, born in 1974 and from São Paulo, releases on Kompakt and runs his own label, D.O.C., distributed by Kompakt; his albums begin with Chromophobia in 2007 and Take My Breath Away in 2009. Resident Advisor singled this remix out in its February 2010 review of his Renaissance mix collection. For the Bristol background, hear Tricky, Francesca Belmonte – Nicotine Love.
Impact and Reception
Songfacts reports that the Lincoln advert was the first time Massive Attack let a car commercial use their music, and that all income from it went to Save Our Gulf, an initiative of the Waterkeeper Alliance, after the 2010 BP oil spill. The remix is here as one of the owner’s songs of 2018. Play it late, and let Sandoval’s voice take its time.
