Tangerine (2019)

The Chi-Chi-Chi-Chilean DJ Shanti Celeste has been working her ass off behind the decks; curating decades of techno, house, and all the music that goes thump in the night for thousands of partygoers around the world. But the "rave" reactions have left Celeste hungry to cut her teeth on her own wax, as she puts it: "When I was DJing a lot, I remember thinking '...imagine if people were doing THAT to something I made.'" And after the standard smattering of singles and EPs, Celeste finally nurtured 2019's Tangerine to fruition.

Surprisingly, Tangerine doesn't aim for big speakers and hot dBs. Celeste is working with a palette that draws from the more melancholic chords of house music, the ambient shimmers and swirls of the 2010's producers who warped new age sounds into exploratory mindscapes. The album as a whole is structured around ambience, with two mild bookends filled with gusts of pads and breezy foley that drift like lazy clouds. And for every skittering, foot-shuffling track like "Infinitas" or "Want" there's plenty more couch-locked grooves like "Aqua Block" or "Sesame", bound to deliver the familiar head-nods of a homebody preoccupied with chores. And that's not to say Tangerine doesn't catch the ear, but there's certainly some refinement that could be had.

Rarely does it feel like Celeste is looking deep into the DNA of these genres, a greater expectation I had considering her eclectic record pulls. The ambient interludes are what one would presume, more compilation of agreeable sounds than fleshed out song. The beats are tried and true but rarely are they the most interesting aspect of the song especially in how familiar they're sculpted and sequenced. And the structures overall feel limited to an oldskool mentality rather than the cerebral games I want to play when I dive into an electronic record. As for her experience mixing and queuing tracks Celeste disappointingly doesn't go far enough to make these tracks memorably flow, to me they exist as "the techno song" or "the jungle song" or "the downtempo house song".

Tangerine certainly isn't a bad record, one could say consistency is its strongest aspect. Never having a true dud in its decent selection of agreeable tracks, very similar to the titular fruit: Tiny and uniform, cute in a fun way, but lacking the tang and punch of its larger sibling. It fits in your fingers, you can pop it in and be done in no time. And while that's certainly a draw for some, it leaves me wanting more. In the same interview I quoted Celeste relays: "...I've always been really critical about things I like and don't like in music." On her next record I want to see those criticisms. I want Celeste to give me an album where I question her choices, mull over her sounds and think of how they relate to HER as an artist. If she can make that connection like she does with her DJ sets, I don't see a comedown for her party anytime soon.