Sweden · dance-pop · electronic

Galantis

1 upcoming festival

Swedish project built on pitched-up vocal hooks, 'Runaway (U & I)' being the one that defined the sound and never really left.

Galantis began in 2012 as a studio pairing of two established Swedish producers: Christian Karlsson, who worked as half of Bloodshy & Avant and plays in Miike Snow, and Linus Eklöw, who released dance records as Style of Eye. The two met by chance in 2007 at Karlsson's Robotberget studios in Stockholm, and started working together after Miike Snow asked Eklöw to remix their song "Animal" in 2009.

They signed to Atlantic's dance imprint Big Beat Records in mid-2013 and recorded much of their early material in a studio on the Swedish archipelago in the Baltic Sea. Their first singles arrived with a sound already fixed in place, sped-up and chopped vocal lines sitting on top of big, bright house chords, and "Runaway (U & I)," released in 2014, became the template and brought the pair their first international success.

The debut album Pharmacy followed in 2015, with The Aviary in 2017 and Church in 2020, and singles including "No Money," "Peanut Butter Jelly" and "Smile" kept to the same high, hook-forward register. The seahorse logo turns up on everything from record sleeves to stage design.

Eklöw left the project shortly after The Aviary in 2017, though he kept appearing in live shows and music videos as part of Galantis until 2021. Since then Karlsson has carried the project on his own.

Karlsson's production credits outside Galantis run back well before the project existed: he co-wrote and produced for Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Minogue and Madonna, and his songwriting credit on Britney Spears' "Toxic" earned an Ivor Novello award and a Grammy for Best Dance Recording. He is also a founding member of the Swedish artist collective and label Ingrid.

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dance-popelectronic