‘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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Dope two tracker on Shanti Celeste's newly ripened Peach Discs from the lady herself.... TIP! More

For its fifth release, BRSTL continues on its mission to unearth fresh and exciting artists from Bristol's electronic music scene, this time showcasing the debut release from Idle Hands employee Shanti Celeste. Regular clubgoers in the city will have almost certainly heard her display her penchant for heavily swung rhythms in her DJ sets, and her 12-inch for BRSTL manages to distil this passion into two elegantly produced house music groovers. Recently unveiled on Outboxx's podcast for Resident Advisor, the soulful New Jersey-esque skip of "Need Your Lovin' (Baby)" takes up the A-side, its gliding Rhodes chords and playful melodies being propelled by a tough and irresistably funky beat that Kerri himself would be proud of. Over on the flipside, "Result!" offers up a more heads-down vibe, channelling those swung beats into an upbuilding, synth-smeared house jam.
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Orpheu the Wizard has a magic touch at finding records that fall between the gaps in music - oddities, curios, the weird, the wonderful. But that's just half the trick. It takes a sensitive and selective ear to construct a coherent, accessible narrative from them. So you get DJs who can play for the crowd and "selectors" adept at mining the black gold. In Orpheu, you've got yourself someone who can do both. On a festival main stage, he can keep it weird enough for the heads. In an audiophile setting, he'll keep the flow. These skill sets come into play on the fifth The Sound of Love International compilation. Jumping between genres, decades, continents, the truly rare, and many B-side cuts that passed you by. But never eclecticism for its own sake; this collection makes sense. Orpheu never loses sight of the listener - he's a friendly and knowledgeable guide to the cosmic outer reaches. He opens his account with the warm, psychedelic electronics of Drawing Future Life, with ‘1969’. Tucked away on the B-side of an LP of ambient/trance hailing from Fukuoka, this is a very pretty piece of music on a truly rare piece of wax. Then, leapfrogging a couple of decades and timezones, we have Rutuu Poiss' "IHATSIN." Off-kilter, experimental sounds with an endearing melodic hook, followed up by the with lethargic ambient breakbeat of Digital Distortion's "Mellow Bug". On the B-side, things start to get lively. French Audacity featuring Valerie's "That Fine One" is Gallic garage that has simultaneously got it hugely wrong and mas­sively right. Owing as much to new wave as New York house, this is propulsive and quirky dance music at its finest. Next, we're on a ferry over the channel for DJ Spike and "Gaps In Space." Up-tempo electro with a fondness for sampled vocal cut-ups, like its predecessor. lnterdance's "Kurz" (another B-side) is the perfect segway - house from 1990 with that sweet, slightly goofy naivete. Things move toward the gnarly with Bad Behaviour and "Living on Smoke," a lesser-known cut on the legendary Atmosphere records. The tempo edges upward on "Systematic Input" by Frequency, hectic hardcore techno that still retains a lightness of touch
"Lushes" by Diffusion spins us off into space, filigree techno with an emotive trance edge. The chiming intro of "Blue to Be Happy" by MFA lulls us into a sense of false security before massively putting the boot in with a pounding kick drum, bassline, and arpeggiation. From there, it's a sharp left turn into the urban psychedelic dub of R.I.P's "E.O Pan" on cult label Digi Dub. Sticking with UK sound system music but taking it down a notch, Orpheu closes proceedings with a leftfield reggae excursion from the master of the mixing desk, Mad Professor’s"Oh Hell". It's a compilation as varied as the many moods and grooves of Love International itself - from sun-dappled olive groves to moments deep in the strobes. This is serious music for party freaks or party music for serious freaks. Tisno is calling. More

Budino, AKA Valentina Bodini, has a lifelong passion for vinyl, amassing an enviable collection of multi-genre LPs and singles via her years spent in Italy and now in Berlin. As resident DJ for Discodromo’s CockTail d’Amore parties, her enthusiasm for music and digging knows no boundaries, and her instalment into the Sound Of Love International series gives us an aural insight into her musical realm. Musically, The Sound Of Love International #004 is a smorgasbord of sound. Opening with the glacial tones of Peter Seiler’s 1986 new-age gem ‘Serengeti’, the twelve track selection glides through proto-house, tribal ambience, industrial EBM, balearic dance and so much more. It’s a testament to the ground- breaking nature of these tracks that most of the music here was originally released some 30-40 years ago. Inclusions from Oliver Leib’s The Ambush project, Vibes Of Rhythm and Scott Edward stem from the post house & techno explosion of the early 90s, whilst the early proto-electronic experiments from the likes of Kirlian Camera, Clock DVA, Bourbonese Qualk and Pyrolator are welcomely revived for a new audience. Interestingly, a flexi-disc only release of ‘Hark’ by William Orbit & Laurie Mayer’s early 80s Torch Song project is also included here, elongated by Budino herself in the edit suite. Two brand new productions from DJ Blasy and Budino & Berko ensure that business is brought bang up to date, offering a unique and modern spin on the sounds of Budino, and her tantalising selection on this compilation. More

a collection of tracks that Gatto Fritto aka Ben williams played across his last two sets at Love International’s open air club Barbarellas. There’s a dubby wildness in the stereo field that sounded good on the soundsystem. The clever part is how well suited these sounds are to the balmy outdoor vibe and where and when this music comes from. You can’t copyright these emotions, it would seem and no-one told them in Cologne, Sheffield, Jamaica that the music they were producing would soundtrack a blinky-eyed sunrise in Croatia. So we get Mad Professor’s son, Joe Ariwa’s, demented Gabber tempo stepper played on 33. Which is about as House as Reggae is ever going to be. A crash course in Skwee’s year long diversion into afrobeat turned out the cream of the crop in Anaalivaihe’s 10.11.2012 or Mi Ami’s outlier release on Pure Silk that sounds like, in Ben’s words, “Francois K being forced to make a record with a Juno 60”. Or crazy vari-speed tape dubbing from Sonny Okosun in the dub version of ‘Highlife’ – the kind of record that Ben loves, where the end result is a happy accident. The original intention of the maker some distance from the reasons for our enjoyment. Musically adventurous, disparate yet harmonious and dance floor friendly. Clever trick, clever bloke. Ladies and gentlemen this is the sound of Love International. More