Shanti Celeste

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

Shanti Celeste, Chilean DJ and producer based in Bristol, built her reputation on velvety deep house rhythms. With "Romance", released on Peach Discs, she makes a pop-leaning shift: vocals brought to the front for the first time, lyrics about love, collaborations with Batu on three tracks, and the harp of Austrian-Ethiopian musician Miriam Adefris opening and closing the record. She is not the first in the scene to take this step: Avalon Emerson and Chaos In The CBD have followed similar paths with mixed results. What remains is the textural element of dance music, its evocative quality, which, when placed in a melodic context, risks becoming an empty space to be filled rather than a deliberate choice.

The tracks unfold at a slow, soft and polished pace. "Butterflies" opens with bongos and harp; "Thinking About You", a tribute to a lost friend, leans into a bright house groove with falsetto vocals; the title track, written after seeing Orbital at Glastonbury, builds tension by layering vocal loops over an elastic bassline. These are the moments where the album finds direction. Elsewhere, it risks fading without leaving much behind, aside from a boutique-like atmosphere.
In its more relaxed passages, the artist finds something more engaging, yet even there the tracks dissolve like vapor. The previous "Tangerine" from 2019, rich in ambient layers and new age tones, had a more defined voice: here the path is split between effective ideas and moments that still fail to find their footing.

04/07/2025