One of the most talked about names in dance music, salute comes of age with their thrillingly effervescent and hugely anticipated debut album ‘TRUE MAGIC’ on Ninja Tune. Taking inspiration from early 2000’s French house, garage, 80’s soul, Japanese jazz fusion and classic pop production, the Manchester-based, Vienna-born producer has distilled and honed their sound into a heady concoction of technicolour dance music.
Featuring an impressive roll call of collaborations with Karma Kid, Sam Gellaitry, Disclosure, Rina Sawayama, Léa Sen, LEILAH, Empress Of, Nakamura Minami and piri, ‘TRUE MAGIC’ sees salute embrace a more collaborative approach, renting a house in the countryside to work on the album with their peers. “I took a pop approach to the record,” says salute. “I went in quite blindly just with some loops and ideas but there’s much more of a focus on songwriting and collaboration on this album. In dance music there always seems to be this focus on doing everything yourself but I wanted to get a team around me to develop the ideas I had. One thing I’m really proud of is how organic the work with the collaborators is. I’ve managed to get such a breadth of amazing people on the record.”
Bringing together a roll call of artists who are long-term friends and supporters of salute, Sam Knowles, aka Karma Kid was central to the album’s creation, working as executive producer on the album. “Karma Kid is one of my best friends,” says salute. “We met 10 years ago in Paris and he’s one of the only people who completely understands what this album is about. I have a million ideas in my head and he’s amazing at helping narrow them down.” Collaborating with close friends who used to DJ together and share studios in Manchester was integral to the creation of ‘TRUE MAGIC’ for salute, a full circle moment of support and long standing friendship.
Taking aesthetic and auditory inspiration from old Japanese car adverts, which salute spent hours trawling through YouTube archives to find, they developed a concept for the album of driving an old JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) car in a race called TRUE MAGIC. “Watching old TV recordings my parents made on VHS led me to comfort watch old ad compilations on Youtube” they commented, “then eventually old car ads, and finally I stumbled upon old japanese car ads through a rabbit hole”. This highly visual concept helped propel the sonics of the album forward and give the album a sense of driving momentum.
“I love how over the top the ads look,” says salute. “I’d never worked on a project this big before and it was really important to curate it properly. I had the concept and worked backwards from there and then took influence from how Quincy Jones would approach producing an album. Start strong and never let the level drop.”
A burst of high energy sound, ‘TRUE MAGIC’ moves from the heavenly Rina Sawayama ‘Saving Flowers’ through to French touch tinged ‘Reason’ featuring Karma Kid to the sped-up soul sampling of ‘One of Those Nights’ featuring Empress Of and the euphoric rush of ‘Perfect’, featuring Léa Sen. “It’s been an incredible experience curating this project,” says salute. “The album’s steeped in motion and I can’t wait for everyone else to join the ride.”
About salute
Growing up in Vienna to Nigerian parents, salute’s musical education began with their parents playing jazz, gospel, funk and reggae at home, before their older brother played r’n’b and 90s hip hop to them as a toddler, before they began learning to play a Yamaha keyboard. In their early teens, Salute became heavily influenced by the likes of Rustie and Hudson Mohawke and began producing their own beats on Fruity Loops. “I was making drum ‘n’ bass on my family computer to start with and just got better and better at it,” they say. “Then I got influenced by people like James Blake and Mount Kimbie and I basically spent all my teenage years producing music back home in Austria.”
Their first release, ‘Silver Tides’, came in 2015 and wore its Lucky Me influence on its sleeve, with the producer showing their deft production skills in a burst of future bass tinged beats. Moving to Brighton at 18 and eventually ending up in Manchester, the UK is where salute fully embraced club culture for the first time hitting venues like Patterns and Soup Kitchen weekly. “Manchester is where I was introduced to so many types of music,” they say. “It’s such an amazing city and had a huge impact on how I make music.”
Eventually releasing the ‘Condition’ Trilogy – a three-part mixtape on 37 Adventures in 2018 and 2019. The ‘Condition’ Trilogy saw the producer develop their sound further, embracing pitched up vocals and a more refined approach to his music, catching the attention of everyone from Four Tet to Mall Grab.
Signing to Ninja Tune in 2023, they released the EP ‘Shield’ on the Technicolour imprint, winning praise from the likes of Mixmag, Forbes and Billboard, before playing a Boiler Room in Melbourne which has already received over a million views and playing high profile sets everywhere from Glastonbury to Field Day and Coachella. They were also nominated for Best Electronic/dance act at the 2024 MOBO’s alongside Aluna, Nia Archives, PinkPantheress, Shygirl and TSHA and have racked up an impressive 189 million streams across all streaming platforms. salute recently graced the cover of DJ Mag, for their April 2024 issue.
salute is passionate about raising awareness of marginalized communities in dance music and is committed to only playing events that represent diverse and inclusive line-ups. They are proud to enforce this in their rider which states that the promoter must agree to book at least one or more artist who identify as being a member of an under-represented group playing on the same stage or bigger.
