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After pioneering the concept of Balkan clubbing with his now-legendary Bucovina Club parties and albums, Shantel moves on to the next level and releases Disko Partizani! (his first solo album in seven years), which lays the foundations for an innovative new brand of pop music.

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 started playing clubs, parties and rock festivals around the world, and inevitably drove crowds to ecstatic bliss.

We're not talking about innocuous, politically-correct, silly folk dance classes here: whether he Djs or plays live with a band, Shantel has the knack for turning any venue into a vortex of pure euphoria, where people end up stage-diving, belly dancing, and generally going mad… In other words, he's simply brought the Balkans to clubland, and his work soon inspired a whole generation of DJs who turned away from house, techno or breakbeats to embrace this new sound.

The nail was further hit on the head with Shantel's standard-setting remixes of tracks by the likes of Taraf de Haïdouks (created for Crammed's Electric Gypsyland remix series which, coincidentally, was initiated around the same time) and as co-producer of Mahala Raï Banda’s debut album, as well as a handful of his own, seminal compositions (included in the Bucovina Club albums). This in turn most probably played a part in the birth of these live bands (sometimes dubbed 'Balkan Rock' or Gypsy Punk') which integrate Balkan, rock, hip hop & reggae elements.