FEATURE: Spotlight: Shanti Celeste — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Shanti Celeste

__________

THIS is a bit of…

a change for Spotlight, as I am featuring someone primally known for their D.J. work. However, this is someone who is also an artist. A creator. Shanti Celeste released her album, Romance, on 16th May. It is one I would urge people to seek out: “Shanti Celeste has long been revered for her radiant and infectious sound in a vibrant blend of house and techno. Romance takes this signature style to new heights, exploring the depth of romantic and platonic relationships that permeates the record with a pop-infused sheen. With her vocals placed front and center for the first time, Celeste weaves a sonic tapestry that is as introspective as it is euphoric; it’s a love letter to romance, but also an ode to the transformative power of opening your heart”. Before moving to some interviews with Shanti Celeste, it is worth knowing that this Chilean-born D.J. has been making big waves in the Electronic music scene. The sense of excitement and energy she brings to dance floors is sensational. Blending House and Techno to create something euphoric, hypnotising and crowd-uniting. Even though this D.J. and artist has been around for a while, there are a few reasons why I wanted to feature her. For a start, Romance is one of the best albums of this year. One that warrants spotlight of its own. Also, incredible female D.J.s are not given the props and attention they deserve. There is still inequality when it comes to exposure and pay. Also, she is an incredible talent that people should know about. I will end with a review for Romance. Before that, there are two recent interviews I am going to introduce. Romance is an album that you need to commit yourself to. I have built up Shanti Celeste who is someone putting out banging music that creates sweat and fever. However, Romance is full of this wonderful ambience and beauty. A piece of work that has a summer feel to it but there are so many shades and layers. Fascinating stories and this sound that will keep you coming back. I am going to take quite a lot from this DJ interview from April. They were invited into the home of Shanti Celeste. It is a deep and fascinating conversation where Romance is explored. A record where her vocals are at the centre. Annie Parker was invited to meet Shanti Celeste where the DJ. and artist chatted about “formative times in Chile, Cumbria and Bristol, dealing with imposter syndrome and toxic narratives, and channeling positivity in her creative process”:

“Shanti Celeste was born in El Cajón de Maipo — a luscious valley in the foothills of the Chilean Andes — to hippie parents who let her “be and do whatever I wanted”. When Shanti was 10 her mother remarried, and two years later the family moved to Kent’s Bank, a Cumbrian village where over 99% of its 1,200 inhabitants were White British. Even if she didn’t quite understand it, Shanti was immediately made aware of her difference. Fellow pupils would purposefully mistake her for her South African classmate, and were outraged by the customs she’d unwittingly imported from her home country. “One of my earliest memories is arriving at that school and trying to greet everyone with a kiss on the cheek” — she’s able to laugh about it now — “everyone was like, ‘Urgh, you weirdo!’”

Nowadays, it’s in these moments of distance from British culture that Shanti finds it easiest to relate to her Chilean heritage. “There are times when I do feel quite British,” she admits. “The more time I spend living in the UK, the more I lose sight of the big differences between the two cultures. But I regain that knowledge whenever I go back to Chile. It’s just a warmness, an immediate friendliness; people spend a lot of time together. In the UK, everything feels a bit colder and more independent. I think being overly polite can actually sometimes create distance between yourself and others.”

Shanti goes back every year to visit family in Santiago and El Manzano, or for a stop on a South American tour. The gigs she’s played there are some of her favourite ever, made particularly special by the presence of supportive family members in the crowd. “I only get to see them once or twice a year, so it’s always really emotional. Plus those parties are always such a vibe. Everyone always dances so hard.”

Despite inevitable teething issues, pre-teen Shanti took the UK move in her stride. Within a couple of years she was in a shed, hiding from her friend’s parents and smoking weed to a suitably insolent soundtrack of Los Angeleno punk rock outfits The Distillers, Rancid, Green Day and Blink-182. When her teenage angst later culminated in a “metal, goth moment”, it was up to a union between her MP3 player and the usual suspects — Slipknot, Murderdolls, System Of A Down — to provide an outlet.

Shanti’s first experiences with dance music were as poignant as they come. Imagine the rush of your first underage night out and combine it with the sense-assaulting environment of a free party. Sixteen-year-old Shanti would hitch a lift from older friends to local village, Troutbeck, where a quarry site would receive a second pummeling from jungle, D&B and speed garage blasting from DIY sound systems. The perfect teenage cocktail of adrenaline, irreverence and escapism (probably some Glen’s vodka too) left a starry-eyed Shanti utterly restless.

Her friends fuelled her newfound obsession. They’d already begun building their record collections and encouraged Shanti to try mixing at hang-outs. When Claude VonStroke released the timeless minimal B-side ‘Who’s Afraid Of Detroit?’ in 2006, it was time for Shanti to use the money she’d earned at a summer café job to place a Juno order of her own. She spent the next year travelling to friends’ university towns, using a fake ID to see Iration Steppas and Benny Page at Leeds’ SUBDUB, or Booka Shade and Sasha at the Warehouse Project in Manchester. Returning home, she’d channel her residual energy on the decks (two Technics 1210s and a Denon mixer she bought from a friend for £500), and by the time she moved out a year later, she was ready for her first gig.

Her move to Bristol — fateful as it would prove to be — was totally serendipitous. Rejected from Falmouth University, she packed up her acrylics and headed for the University of the West of England to study Illustration. But her days there were numbered; Shanti quickly grew tired of having to rationalise her drawings. “You had to be very conceptual, and I just lost interest. My tutors would ask me, ‘Why a tangerine?’ and I wouldn’t be able to explain it. I just wanted to paint. I wanted to draw silly things and not have to justify why.”

Nowadays, as Queen Tangerine, Shanti paints gleeful scenes of moonlit soirées for party hat-adorned monkey nuts and “galactic forest sunrise raves” for hedonistic caterpillars. It’s precisely by having fun with it, that she creates her best work. “I can only really create from a positive feeling,” she explains. “I’m not good at channeling sadness into art, I need immediate vibes. That’s also why I try not to set any expectations. If I think about something too much or have a fixed idea of how I want it to be, I’m just setting myself up for disappointment. Those kinds of feelings destroy my creative flow.”

Shanti acknowledges that what she’s saying might seem ironic: throughout our conversation she frequently refers to herself as an overthinker and speaks forthrightly on how anxiety affects her life. But, in reality, it all makes perfect sense. When she gets caught in spirals of over-analysing, creating music and painting are her much-needed respite. That’s why for it to work, it has to be a totally intuitive process. “I try to paint things that look pretty to me, or make sounds that satisfy me in some way, so I can immediately tell if something’s not going to be a vibe.”

The burgeoning craze for Hessle’s hybridised, sound system-inflected UK techno coincided with a spike in ’90s US house reissues. Back then, being a house music fan set you apart from the majority of Bristol’s dance music scene, who had their heads down, skanking in half-time. Their shared love for the likes of Kerri Chandler, Masters At Work and Mood II Swing made Shanti and Chris kindred spirits, and Shanti became one of the first Idle Hands employees when Chris opened his own record shop in 2011.

“I remember saying, ‘You don’t even have to pay me! I’ll just make tea or sweep the floor!’” Shanti laughs. “I just desperately wanted to be in that space.” But working alongside Chris, Livity Sound mainstay Kowton, and Happy Skull co-honcho Sean Kelly allowed Shanti’s imposter syndrome to creep in. “Buying records is one thing, but working in a shop is a whole other. I had no confidence writing descriptions. I would always second guess myself and ask Chris to check them,” she muses.

One thing Shanti was sure of, though, was what she liked, and when it came to recommending records, she came into her own. Deep Medi signee and Bandulu Records co-founder Kahn would regularly visit the shop to replenish his dubstep and grime collection. “I remember once I decided to try and sell him some techno,” Shanti smirks. “I played him a Shed record and he was like, ‘You know what? I fuck with this’. I was like, get in!”

It was around this time that Chris gave her the push she needed to begin making her own music. After a 10-week Logic course and plenty of practice in a studio hired out by the father of fellow Bristol DJ, Danielle, Shanti’s debut EP was ready for pressing. In 2013, ‘Need Your Lovin’ (Baby)’ marked the fifth release on brstl, the label she was working on alongside Chris and fellow house music stalwart, Rhythmic Theory. Its two slinky deep house tracks both have extended play times, while Thelma Houston vocal samples and classic organ sounds add to their timeless appeal.

One of Shanti’s most recent singles came out in 2024 on Peach Discs and London’s Method 808. ‘Ice Cream Dream Boy’ is more pumping than it is slinky. Its raised BPM, deep grooving bassline and jacking percussion conjure Jeremy Sylvester before anything to come out of golden-era Chicago. A captivating vocal hook — her own this time — rejoices in the woozy ecstasy of falling in love with her partner. It’s an all-out anthem, and a culmination of the unique style she’s been honing for the past few years.

‘Cutie’ — the title track of her 2022 Hessle Audio EP (a “career milestone”) — is Shanti’s catchiest to date. Its giddy drums and bubble-wrapped organ melody lend it a suggestive tone, like giving a playful wink. Though markedly different in style, the essence of these tracks — euphoric, carefree — is consistent with the music she put out 12 years ago. Maybe that’s why Shanti still identifies with her early releases so much. “Making music is a journey,” she asserts. “Every release I’ve done is an expression of where I was at that particular moment — I think that deserves to be celebrated.”

She condemns the puritanical culture that poisons dance music discourse and devalues work made digitally. “In my experience, men — and I’m sorry, but it is men — can really over-intellectualise the creative process. Splice exists for a reason, OK? Presets exist for a reason. If you think music is only proper or legitimate if it’s entirely analogue, then you need to check your fucking privilege. Synths cost money and it takes time to learn how to use them.”

When it comes to music, Shanti has never been afraid to ask for help. She attributes a large part of her early musical development to the regular tutelage of charitable Bristol friends like Sam Binga, Hodge, Pinch and Kowton. “I probably became a really annoying person to be around,” she laughs. “I was just constantly asking questions or for feedback.” Nowadays, it’s a practice she encourages amongst the artists she and Gramrcy sign to Peach Discs. Nonetheless, Shanti’s courage never extended as far as full-blown collaboration — an inhibition cut from the same cloth as before. “As a woman, I had something to prove. I’d internalised the belief that I had to do everything myself.”

"When dance music producers make pop music, people always seem to have something to say about it, or you’re expected to do it under another alias. It’s bullshit. Why aren’t we allowed to evolve?"

During the pandemic, a break from DJ gigs gave Shanti time to listen to the likes of Alice Coltrane, Qendresa, Cleo Sol and Tems. The more she indulged in home listening — the moments for which are scarce when she’s digging for dance music — the more she recognised the collaboration at the heart of these musical styles. This penny-drop moment was the impetus she needed; Shanti was promptly on the phone to songwriter Shivum Sharma for help with lyrics, pianist Hal Sutherland for advanced chord work, and dance music polymath Omar McCutcheon (AKA Batu). “Omar taught me how to add little bits of ‘ear candy’” — she revels in the newly acquired term — “interesting little noises here and there, without oversaturating it.”

‘Romance’ is a manifesto for doing you, regardless of the impediments you’ll encounter along the way. By flouting toxic narratives, occasionally indulging in trends and working to overcome her own insecurities, Shanti has managed to keep sight of exactly why she’s here. Her success is a testament to what can come from sticking to your principles, and in Shanti’s case, that means prioritising joy over everything. When we go to visit Chris Farrell in the newly reopened Idle Hands shop, he corroborates just that: “I’ve always been surrounded by blokes who love to talk about music, really analyse and ruminate on it. Meeting Shanti reminded me that having fun and dancing together is really what this is all about.”

“A dancefloor should be collaborative,” she says. “My job isn’t performing for you, it’s to enable the fun times that we share together. You can build a whole community around that experience”.

Many might primarily know Shanti Celeste as being a D.J. Someone playing music but not singing on it or creating music of her own. She is a successful recording artist, though Romance is a moment where she is very much at the front. I am moving on to an interview from Rolling Stone UK from last month. If her D.J. work is this more enthralled and dance floor-conquering sound, there is something different about her music. As Celeste says in this interview, she would love to start a band of her own. A new phase in this evolving and exciting career:

“While her own vocals and lyrics have been sprinkled across Shanti Celeste songs for the past ten years, the journey to foregrounding them like this has been a long and difficult one. “I’ve never really written songs before,” she says. “I had a theme of romance and of me falling in love, but what that looks like in terms of actual lyrics being written was so abstract to me.”

The songs were also being written for a world where exclusionary purism – especially with regards to gender – continues to thrive in the electronic music world. Celeste says: “There are always people in dance music who are bitter or something. I’m an artist, and I want to evolve – I don’t just want to be making house music for the rest of my life without pushing myself in in any way. I mean, I probably will be making house music for the rest of my life, but it’s probably going to have some vocals in it. Why wouldn’t I evolve?”

Though house music forms a portion of Romance, its most interesting and surprising moments come from when Celeste moves away from the thud of a bass drum and higher tempo. Opening track ‘Butterflies’ revolves around a bongo rhythm and soulful lyrics sung in Spanish, while ‘Light as a Feather’ is a slow and slippery ode to R&B.

The first hints of this change came back in lockdown, when Celeste was finally able to spend her time listening to music without her work hat on, deciding whether any given song would work for her to play in a club environment. Instead, she spent her days listening to NTS Radio, making playlists on Spotify and buying music on Bandcamp, with music ranging from soul and R&B to new wave, post-punk and beyond.

“That’s why I wrote the album,” she affirms. “I wasn’t listening to house music at all.” Though playing and consuming house remains Celeste’s enduring love, this period of time – and the album it inspired – has triggered a move towards different sounds and styles, songs built around their lyrics, and a different outlook on the future.

“Everything has to be so singular in electronic music, and you have to stick to whatever you’re doing,” she says. “That really applies to you as a producer. For me as a woman, I’ve always felt like I’ve had to do everything myself. I’ve done it all myself, until very recently, where I actually started to get someone else to mix my tracks, because I just hate it. I did it really well for 10 years, but the last three years, I’ve just been like, ‘I’m just not going to do it anymore, because I don’t really have anything to prove’.”

This realisation and freedom brought collaboration to the fore on Romance, something Celeste had rejected in the past for fear of not being taken seriously. Now, it’s something she wants to take further in the future. “I would love to be in a band,” she says. “Get someone playing keys, guitar, bass, and actually make some fucking music. I just think that would be so sick. I’m looking for a band! Put it in there – it’s an advert!”

This release from the restrictions that had previously dogged her stretches beyond Romance and into every part of Celeste’s creative live in 2025. The other day, she recalls gleefully, she dropped Tim Deluxe’s dance behemoth ‘It Just Won’t Do’ in a set after seeing a video of Fatboy Slim playing it to 250,000 people at his legendary Brighton Beach show in 2002. “It’s made me less afraid of just playing a pop banger every now and again,” she smiles, revelling in the limitless future that now stretches in front of her. “I want to write loads of really sick vocal house bangers, basically.”

Most immediately for Celeste though is the wish to create her first purpose-built studio in Bristol. “I feel like I’ve got to the point where I’m bored of my process, and because I have this new, exciting thing that I know that I can do – singing on my songs – I want to make my studio more exciting for that purpose,” she says, before pausing and laughing. “And so I can start my band!”

Romance is an album that everyone should get. I only recently – to my shame! – discovered Shanti Celeste. A simply awesome talent whose latest album is among the best of this year in my opinion, I am interested to see what she does next. Whether she tours with a band and records more albums. How her D.J. sets change and shift. If there is going to be a move in other musical directions. I will end with a review of Romance from The Guardian:

“No one could accuse Shanti Celeste of being a dance producer who indulges in lofty conceptualising about their music. Not for her, the album that represents the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made yet, or a sci-fi-influenced cosmic opera, or a globe-spanning travelogue inspired by the peripatetic lifestyle of a DJ. Her acclaimed 2019 debut album was called Tangerine, a title she chose because she “really like[s] fruit”. A journalist who gamely attempted to press further, inquiring about the images conjured in her mind while creating the music, was told: “Moments on the dancefloor.”

Tangerine featured ambient interludes and the sound of Celeste playing the kalimba in the living room of her father’s home in Chile (she moved to the UK with her mother as a child). But its signature sound was the author’s own, in which the subtlety and depth of classic US house productions by Moodymann, Masters at Work and Mood II Swing was melded with a giddy, rave-y euphoria and rhythms that proceeded at pacy tempos more common to techno. Called upon to come up with a term to describe it, she offered the admirably prosaic “fast house”. There’s something very telling about the fact that her career – first as a DJ, then a club promoter, record label boss and ultimately an artist – flourished after she quit university, irked that tutors on her illustration course kept asking her what her work meant: “I wouldn’t be able to explain it. I just wanted to paint.”

Whether you view all this as a failure of imagination or an admirably unpretentious approach to a genre of music never much improved by grandiose statements of intent is up to you. Either way, it hasn’t impeded Celeste’s progress, nor is it something she’s sought to change. Six years on – a lengthy gap, punctuated by a handful of singles and a string of remixes for Orbital, Caribou and Ruf Dug, among others – her straightforwardness is still much in evidence. Tangerine’s follow-up is called Romance, the reasons for which are swiftly apparent: “This is a romance – take heed, because I’m lost without you,” runs one lyric. “I’m thinking about you more than ever,” offers another.

That said, the presence of lyrics indicates that it’s a noticeably different album from its predecessor. The influence of revered US dance producers remains – the bassline of Note to Self could have fallen off a vintage Chicago house track – but only three of its tracks feature four-to-the-floor beats. For the most part, Romance proceeds at a far more leisurely pace: its key rhythmic sound isn’t an insistent kick drum, but the clatter of percussion vaguely evocative of Celeste’s Latin American roots, proceeding as unhurried as an R&B slow jam. More striking still are the vocals. An intermittent feature of her releases since the early 2010s, here they’re front and centre throughout. Her music has always been marked by a strong melodic sense, but the tunes are noticeably brighter, their pop-leaning qualities accentuated by the airiness of her voice. Even the house-fuelled Unwind, or Thinking About You, on which the vocals are a little more smeared, feel less obviously focused on the dancefloor than on melody, as if they’re waiting for a club-leaning remix.

Regardless of the beat behind them, the results are disarmingly charming. Too drowsy and blurred to function as straightforward pop-R&B – the songs largely eschew verses and choruses in favour of a more scattered, mood-building approach – and too obviously sunlit to soundtrack the curtains-drawn post-club comedown, a lot of Romance exists in an appealing space of its own. Light As a Feather or Note to Self are more interested in circling back on themselves than going anywhere, but that scarcely seems to matter: they’re pretty inviting, the atmosphere languid and hazy with warmth. The poppiest thing here, Softie, is tempered by intermittent bursts of dubby echo that overwhelm the vocal, the next phrase drowned out by the aftershocks of its predecessor: it’s a small touch, but it’s also evidence of an artist interested in doing what they want.

Romance could obviously work as a kind of ambient soundtrack, floating around somewhere in the background of a summer’s afternoon, but it’s probably best experienced by fully immersing yourself, prone and headphones on. Whichever you opt for, it’s an experience beguiling enough to explain its author’s disinclination to explain herself: as with Shanti Celeste’s most acute club tracks, it speaks for itself”.

If you have never heard of Shanti Celeste then go and check her out. A queen D.J. and this amazing artist, it is going to be thrilling seeing what the next chapter is. Romance is a wonderful album that I feel warrants more attention and love. Do yourself a favour and connect with…