Shanti Celeste is a vibe. She’s got that magic lightness of touch even when things are getting Jacques Cousteau deep or panel beating heavy. This makes her the perfect candidate for the Sound of Love International 3, channelling the spirit of both those after-hours sessions and the more frivolous daytime boat parties. This is serious music for serious music heads but, after all, everyone is still on holiday. It’s linear and cohesive but plays with the emotions -carnivalesque fun, psychedelic flow-states, heads-down rhythm trax, playful skipping garage, and more abstract moments. Deep joy to deep space and back, often in the space of 3 or 4 well-selected records. TRACK LISTING:: A1. Shanti Celeste & Saoirse - Solid Maass, A2. Persian - Morning Sun feat. Hannah Small, A3. Seekers International – FurdaMurda, B1. E.B.E. – Thinking, B2. Gideon Jackson - Taj-Mahal, C1. Perpetual – Awakenings, C2. Mark Seven – Crank, C3. Paco Pack - Slap That Bass, D1. Cari Lekebusch - Output 2, D2. Pauline Anna Strom - In Flight Suspension More

‘Tangerine serves as a coda to the qualities that have established Celeste as one of the most instinctive and generous underground DJs in the current landscape of dance music. Beginning as a record store assistant at Idle Hands in Bristol and now a fixture of some of the world’s most acclaimed clubs and festivals, Celeste’s instincts and curiosity have forged a musical space that is very much her own. Here, whether in sweat-drenched basements or to vast numbers, she strikes a common cause between the melodic richness of the legacy of the music of Detroit, alongside the natural ease with which she carries across tempos that embody UK Soundsystem traditions. Tangerine is Celeste’s most fully-realised contribution thus far to this continuum of musical culture.
More than that, Tangerine is an innate extension of Shanti’s self, telling stories beyond her record box and delving into her personal history. There is her manipulated voice serving as a bedrock in tracks. There's a kalimba, recorded at her father's home in Chile.
There are, of course, her rich synthesizers that wrap her tracks like velvet cloaks, providing the familiar warmth and colour we know from her work so far on labels such as Idle Hands and Future Times. There’s even her characteristic paintings on the cover. Here, on her very own Peach Discs, the label she co-runs with goodfriend Gramrcy, Celeste naturally delivers her most impressive and wholly personal work.
Creating Tangerine has been a space for Celeste to explore all of this with a freedom that has come with the easing of expectations that an artist earns with the passing of time. Striking a balance between deeper, understated sounds and building gradually towards the fleet-footed bursts of rave energy that Celeste is known for, Tangerine peels back layersof dreamy textures to reveal an optimistic afterglow, reflecting a life devoted to club culture.
“When I made music for EPs, sometimes I felt restricted,” shesays. “I would think too much about creating the moments on the dancefloor I love - seeing visions of ecstatic people hugging, I didn’t give myself free reign to express all of myself. Writing an album made me feel free of all this because it seemed like an open-ended project. I could just keep creating until I felt like stopping”. More

While she may be based in Berlin now, Shanti Celeste has deep roots within Idle Hands. From working behind the counter when the shop first opened to playing the label parties and co-running the neighbouring Brstl label, Shanti's contributions to the Bristol house music scene have been ever-increasing as she has grown as an artist. Having put out our her second ever 12",Days Like This, back in 2014, it gives us great pleasure to welcome her back as an internationally respected producer with a relentless gig schedule and a rich back catalogue of warm, heartfelt dance music that kicks where it counts. Shanti's stylistic palette may have broadened over the past four years, but she's also retained a natural, unpretentious quality in her tracks that can span all manner of grooves and tempos. "Make Time" certainly chimes with her earliest house productions, but it's also offset by a wistful, meditative maturity. Swooping pads, distant vocal threads and delicate fragments of breakbeat flirting in an aqueous soundscape – whatever city she's based in now, this is surely deep house infused with a quintessential Bristol ruffness. "Thoughts" meanwhile speaks more to the artistic development Shanti has undergone over the past few years, bearing the influence of melodic techno, electro and broken beat while striking a unique chord in the process. It's a hypnotic, alluring track that eschews basic dancefloor demands in favour of a more intimate headspace shaped out by snaking, polyrhythmic synth lines. Both "Make Time" and "Thoughts" stretch out over extended running times - all the better for losing yourself in the heady atmosphere Shanti has created on her very welcome return to Idle Hands.



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