An undiscovered island. An epic journey. An illustrious ship. Known just by its name and its logo, GALANTIS could be all or none of these things. A Google search only turns up empty websites and social pages, and mention of a one-off A-Trak collaboration. Is it beats? Art? Something else entirely?

At the most basic level, GALANTIS is two friends making music together. The fact that they’re Christian “Bloodshy” Karlsson of Miike Snow and Linus Eklow, aka Style of Eye, is what changes the plot. The accomplished duo’s groundbreaking work as GALANTIS destroys current electronic dance music tropes, demonstrating that emotion and musicianship can indeed coexist with what Eklow calls “a really really big kind of vibe.”

“GALANTIS is about challenging, not following.” says Karlsson.

Karlsson should know about shaking things up. As half of production duo Bloodshy & Avant, he reinvented pop divas like Madonna, Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue in the early 2000s. He co-wrote and produced Spears’ stunning, career-changing single “Toxic” to the tune of a 2005 Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. Since then he’s been breaking more ground as one-third of mysterious, jackalobe-branded band Miike Snow. The trio’s two albums, 2009’s self-titled debut and 2011’s Happy To You, fuse the warm pulse of dance music with inspired songcraft, spanning rock, indie, pop and soul. And they recreated that special synthesis live, playing over 300 shows, including big stages like Coachella, Lollapalooza and Ultra Music Festival.

As Style of Eye, Eklow has cut his own path through the wilds of electronic music for the last decade, defying genre and releasing work on a diverse swath of labels including of- the-moment EDM purveyors like Fool’s Gold, OWSLA and Refune; and underground stalwarts like Classic, Dirtybird and Pickadoll. He also co-wrote and -produced a little song you might have heard: Icona Pop’s international No. 1 smash “I Love It.”

After mutually admiring each other from afar, Karlsson and Eklow kept meeting by chance at Robotberget studio in Stockholm, home to Karlsson’s label of the same name, and soon discovered they shared creative values and complementary goals. Karlsson wanted to go deeper into electronic music; Eklow wanted to apply songwriting to his track-making prowess. And both wanted to give the finished product, whatever it was, a live life; an audio/visual experience that matched the really, really big vibe of the music.

After several remote track swaps between the usual planes, trains and automobiles yielded nothing worth keeping, the pair decided to try to change their work by changing its setting. So they set up a studio in one of the world’s most stunning natural phenomena, the Stockholm archipelago in the Baltic Sea. This fantastical 37-mile belt has inspired Swedish artists, playwrights and poets throughout time. It’s on one of its over 65,000 individual islands where GALANTIS became real.

"Its strange making electronic music in a place like this,” says Karlsson. We are on a tiny, isolated island surrounded by water, but it inspired us to go where we wanted to go.”

That sense of simultaneous smallness and grandeur made its way into “Smile,” a soulful song in the cloak of a festival anthem, with dusky keys adding depth to the energetic builds. And it was then that Karlsson and Eklow knew they had it; the sound of GALANTIS.

Out came more big, bold four-on-the-floor dance songs with beating hearts, like an elegant, yearning love tome with Miike Snow-ian marching band snares, tinkling piano and rifle-shot synths. And a pogo-ing headrush of a track that’s actually about heartbreak, despite its healthy sinus rhythm. And many more.

“We always said, ‘Let's start with the song,’” says Karlsson. “Linus and I both have lots of tools to put different clothes on a song, and we love doing that but I need to love the piano part or melody on its own first.”

Armed with several lovable songs in spectacular outfits, GALANTIS is designing its live show - “it will be a Galantis performance not a dj set,” says Eklow - prepping to mount a tour, and remaining open to all possibilities.

For more information contact: Aleix Martinez, [email protected], 862-755-9703 Big Beat Publicist: Jordan Frazes, [email protected] Management: [email protected]

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