Make Time

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.