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 afterhours
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.
There’s a deep musical and personal connection to the festival - as
she says of her first time playing at the Beach Bar, “there’s a heavy
Bristol crew there and it all feels easy and nice. It was just good
vibes all round”. And she does make it sound easy too, which belies
a DJ with some very serious skills and an ear for a killer tune that
others might well overlook. And it’s this that makes the 3rd
instalment of the Sound of Love International such a joy - a
welcome panacea to all of us suffering from the Croatian blues this
year.
To which end, we get a cheeky exclusive collaboration between
Shanti and her sister-in-arms Saoirse in the shape of ‘Solid Mass’.
Persian’s uniquely British paean to the post-rave Sunrise ‘Morning
Sun’, cavernous dub runnings outta the Bokeh camp from Seekers
International. These are the lift- off tunes, setting the mind-state for
the journey ahead.
Things tighten up with cult underground hero Lucas Rodenbush
under his E.B.E alias giving us the taught, grooving, dubby techhouse
and Gideon Jackson’s ‘Taj Mahal’, crisp, spatial, mystical
and criminally slept-on. We go deeper into the night with
Perpetual’s Awakenings’, one of those records that is so much
more than the sum of its parts. And who knew that Mark Seven was
such a dab hand with the dank machine funk? Check 1998’s
‘Crank’ for the skinny. By the time Paco Pack’s rubberised ghetto
house reimagining bounces into play it’s GAME OVER.
The final side leaves us with the soft landing - Cari Lekebusch
‘Output 2’ is both pacey and drifting and Pauline Anna Strom’s ‘In-
Flight Suspension’ does what it says, whips away the drums and
leaves us floating in space. Will we ever touch down?
To overuse a phrase, this compilation arrives in strange times but is
a glorious reminder of what brought us all together and will again.
The music and dancing under the stars. See you in 2021.
Listen to snippets on Soundcloud now:
soundcloud.com/loveintfestival/the-sound-of-love-international-003-snippets-shanti-celestereleased-august-7th
released August 7, 2020