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.
This week Alexis listened to
CMAT – Take a Sexy Picture of Me
A taster of how great CMAT’s forthcoming third album is, the sumptuous country-rock upholstery cushioning a steely, witty message about body image, ageing and self-worth.
