Borislav Mitic

Borislav Mitic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. He started to play at the age of 11 after getting his first guitar from his grandfather. Initially Borislav was inspired by "The Beatles" but he quickly moved on to emulating bands and artists like Deep Purple, AC/DC, Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix, Mike Oldfield,... etc. Borislav was very much self taught from the beginning learning licks from records of his favourite players. The "Shred Boom" of the 80's brought to the forefront new players like Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Allan Holdsworth, Gary Moore, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani,... Their groundbreaking and dazzling development of guitar techniques sent Borislav (like many young guitarists at the time) back to practising. Having reached a new plato of proficiency on his instrument after a few years of "wood shedding" Borislav became "the talk of town" in Belgrade music circles. This was due to his skills as well as his young age at which he developed them - he was 17. Very soon he started to play in some local bands and perform in clubs. However, he continued to evolve in various music styles such as blues, jazz rock, heavy metal,... But the biggest inspiration at this time came to him from classical music and works of masters like Bach, Liszt, Paganini, Mendelsohn, Tchaikowsky,...to name a few. He channeled these influences to his first instrumental demo recordings which won a "new talent" radio contest and this led to Borislav's collaboration with National Radio as a session guitarist/composer at the age of 20. At the same time he also formed his own band and started performing his original music material in venues and festivals around the country (ranging from 100 to sometimes 10.000 seats). This was followed by frequent TV and Radio appearances and very soon he gained the reputation as an upcoming new guitar hero. Unfortunately this was happening in the early 90's when the Yugoslavia Federation (the state which Serbia was a part of) went into a nasty breakup and political complications. The warfere and imposed economical sanctions situation that followed quickly brought his further career development to a halt. Nevertheless, Borislav doubled his efforts and in 1992 recorded an album's worth of guitar instrumentals in which he put all his passion and technique. This is to become his first solo album "Fantasy" a few years later down the road. The "Fantasy" consisted of variations on some classical pieces (mostly Paganini) as well as Borislav's original compositions. The ongoing regional war crises compelled Borislav to try to achieve one of his life long dreams - to make his music known to audiences out of the borders of his country. He sent some of his recordings to the legendary Shrapnel Records founder Mike Varney and got a positive response including a record contract. This led to Borislav's relocation from Serbia to Canada in 1998 and to his Shrapnel self titled debut "Borislav Mitic" in 1999. This album was again infuenced by classical music (mostly Romantic period) but also blended with various Ethnic music like Indian, Celtic, Balkan, etc. The album went extremely well with the guitar audiences as well as critics and Borislav started to be regarded as an upcoming guitar talent again - but this time on world level. In 2001 he re-releases his "Fantasy" album making it available to fans through his website. The following year Borislav spent promoting his albums, getting endorsement deals, performing and teaching. In 2003 he decided to build his own project studio where his future releases are to be recorded. He also started a vocal oriented project with (ex-Voivod frontman) Eric Forrest which was stylistically following the music trend of Borislav's solo albums but with a bit more edge and intensity. The project gets put on hold by Forrest's re-location to France (Europe) in the fall of 2003 prompting Borislav to start working on a new instrumental album again. In early 2004 Borislav makes a guest appearance on keyboard player Vitalij Kuprij's album "Forward and Beyond". Recording of the new solo album gets briefly interrupted again by an invitation to make a series of performances and clinics in Serbia first time since 1998 including a prestigious International Guitar Art Festival. The Serbian "comeback" concerts were very successful and well attended and led to numerous promo events including TV, Radio and Magazine interviews. Right now Borislav is finishing up his new instrumental solo album which is to be released by the end of 2004. The album will cover a wide range of styles mixing traditional Heavy Rock, Blues, Ambiental and Neo Classical music into one package. Not to mention that this album will contain his best guitar playing yet. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.