After spending 2008 ceaselessly bringing the party to festivals, concert halls, TV studios and clubs, gathering a host of awards and chart positions along the way, Shantel and his mighty Bucovina Club Orkestar are back, batteries fully recharged and ready to tell the world about a new and exciting discovery in the solar system of pop: PLANET PAPRIKA!

Debut album “Disko Partizani”, with its anthemic title track (a singalong hit across Europe with a video that’s become a YouTube sensation, 3 million views and counting!) as well as follow-up smash “Disko Boy”, saw the foundations laid for a pioneering brand of totally borderless European pop music. Now, with “Planet Paprika”, his vision is complete, and resistance is futile…

So where is Planet Paprika?

It’s a place with its own, all-inclusive set of values, where north meets south and east meets west … and, for Shantel, they are all completely equal. Here integration isn’t something to be debated at length, it actually becomes reality: established academics and immigrant kids share the same space, and the only ones who might have trouble gaining entry are the style police (and even then, they usually end up losing their helmets and joining in the fun…). Its cultural roots are in the past, in the popular music that has fired the imagination of generations for centuries – and yet it is something totally new and different, redefining the notion of pop as a unifying, celebratory force in a way that ditches geography in favour of pure fun!
Planet Paprika is already starting to take Europe by storm: kicking off this summer, continuing into the autumn and throughout most of 2010, Shantel will be romping around the continent, turning clubs, concert halls and festivals into temporary autonomous zones of pure, delirious fun. He will be assisted by his expanded Bucovina Club Orkestar. featuring new female vocalists and a line-up of accordion, fiddle and trumpet. Shantel will also be crossing the big pond, with a first US tour will be taking place in September.
Meanwhile, the long-awaited comeback single will be released in late June: it’s a totally re-arranged version of Shantel’s club hit "Bucovina", this time morphed into a fully-fledged song. Then, the main event: the Planet Paprika album comes out at the end of August…