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Though born in Frankfurt, Stefan Hantel was introduced
to clubbing and the music life while studying graphic design in Paris. Back in
his hometown he opened the Lissania club, one of the few bastions of earthy
grooves in a country obsessed with techno. A noted port-of-call for similar
minds like Kruder & Dorfmeister and Howie B., the club's prosperity led to
Shantel's first album, Club Guerilla. Released locally by Infracomm, the album
was given a 1997 American reissue by Shadow Records, along with Auto-Jumps and
Remixes (a collection of EPs from his own Essay label). Shantel signed to Studio
!K7 for his second full LP, Higher than the Funk. It earned high praise around
the world, even hitting Spin magazine's end-of-the-year charts. Great Delay was
issued in spring 2001.
Shantel became interested in East European music
when he undertook a trip to the Bucovina region (now split between Ukraine and
Moldavia) in search of family roots (his mother's family comes from there),
which led to the creation of the Bucovina Club nights and albums. What he had
previously heard on records as an exotic sound from a faraway place suddenly
became physically tangible: wild brass ensembles, singers with soulful voices,
melancholy bluesy ballads and instrumental melodies, the frenzied dances of Kolo,
Hora and Cocek (a Balkan variation on belly dancing).
The cosmopolitan cultural and ethnic diversity of pre-war Bucovina also became
an important source of inspiration for Shantel, whose imagination was fired by
the history of his grandmother's hometown Czernovitz, the old capital of
Bucovina, a city of great poets and thinkers such as Rose Ausl?nder, Paul Celan
and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, of famous musicians such as the German-Jewish tenor
Josef Schmidt ("the Caruso of the East"). Although the subsequent damage caused
by Nazi occupation and Stalinism have irrevocably destroyed what was once a
unique multicultural atmosphere, there is still an enormous interest there in
nurturing those roots. By chance, a copy of the Bucovina Club CD managed to find
its way to Bucovina. The locals were astonished to discover that a musician and
DJ living so far away would draw upon these traditions. Eventually, in November
2004, there was a memorable homecoming. At the invitation of the Mayor of
Czernovitz, during the heady Ukrainian autumn of the Orange Revolution, Shantel
performed with the Jewish Orchestra of Czernovitz and musicians of the Mahala
Rai Banda on the former Austria Square to a crowd of ten thousand young people,
some of whom had brought along their orange banners.
There is another inspiration that links Shantel?s previous life as a producer of
electronica with the Gypsies who, with their invaluable contribution to the
music of the Balkans, probably invented the art of borrowing. On their journeys
through many lands and cultures, they adopted a hook line here, a rhythm there,
picking up fragments of melodies and choruses along the way, and putting them
together to create something entirely their own. Towards the end of the
twentieth century, 'electronic borrowing' (commonly known as 'sampling') became
the basic production method of the various schools of electronica and dance
music...
Respectively released in 2003 and 2005, Shantel's Bucovina Club albums,
Bucovina Club and
Bucovina Club, Vol. 2 have
earned him several awards (including a BBC World Music Award). They included
tracks by leading Balkan bands, as well as exclusive remixes and original tracks
by Shantel.
With their organic mix of South-European & Balkan music and club-friendly
electronics, Shantel's Bucovina Club nights revolutionized the music scene and
became an instant success: tired of dancing over and over again to the sound of
usual club fodder, audiences of all ages and origins were conquered by the
vitality and excitement of these electro/Balkan mixtures.
Shantel moved on to the next level and released
Disko Partizani! (his first solo album in seven years) in 2007, which laid
the foundations for an innovative new brand of pop music. The album features
great performances by a host of musicians from southeast Europe and by Shantel
himself, who also appears on lead vocals.
Essay Recordings (Shantel's label) and Crammed Discs joined forces for the
release of Disko Partizani!, which came out through Crammed in many territories.
He has produced albums by several other artists, including
Mahala Rai Banda
and Boom Pam. His remix of
Mahala Rai Banda's Mahalageasca was prominently used
in the soundtrack of the infamous Borat movie.
Shantel has written the original music for The Edge Of Heaven, the new Fatih
Akin movie which won an award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
He has performed at major festivals and clubs across Europe, and has Bucovina
Club residencies in Istanbul, Rome, Vienna, Z?rich as well as several German
cities. |
