Gavin B.

Balkan Music with Electronic Beats


German deejay Shantel (on left) mixes the traditional music of Romania with techno rhythms

Shantel (real name- Stefan Hantel) is a Frankfort based deejay and producer who has family roots in the Bukovina region of Romania. He originally gained notoriety for his work with gypsy brass bands, but began remixing traditional Balkan music with techno and house music beats.

I Am Exactly What You're Looking For from his 1998 album Higher Than The Funk has a breezy downtempo sound of trip hop music.



Tosca Session is reminiscent of the layered industrial beats used by artists like Bjork and Aphex Twin and the song is probably more ambient music than techno.



Discography of Shantel

Super Mandarine (1994)
Club Guerilla (1995)
Auto Jumps & Remixes (1997)
EP (1997)
No. 2 (1997)
"II" EP (1998)
Higher than the Funk (1998)
Oh So Lovely EP (1998)
Oh So Lovely Remixes (1998)
Backwood (2001)
Great Delay (2001)
Inside (2001)
Bucovina (2003)
Disko (2003)
Bucovina Club Vol. 2 (2005)
Gypsy Beats and Balkan Bangers (2006)
Disko Partizani (2007)
Disko Partizani Remixes (2008)
Planet Paprika (2009)

Shantel was fairly prolific up until 2009 and I read somewhere that he's currently not recording and he's pursuing more traditional forms of Balkan and gypsy music.

There's very little biographical and background information on Shantel and very few examples of his music on YouTube. I had to upload the featured songs in my journal entry myself because there was so little of his music on YouTube.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

misspoptart

Sorry for the double post, but this is such a shame! Although the only song from Shantel that I absolutely love is Disko Partizani, I would probably love so many new things if more of his stuff was out there.

Thanks again for starting this thread, Gavin!

BTW, I noticed in the Tosca Session song, the vocal part is counting in Japanese, forward, backward, and mixed up. How odd! I wonder where he got that idea..