Grey Filastine a.k.a. Filastine, the producer and promoter of transnational bass music, is a Los Angeles born and Barcelona based audio and visual artist. A few weeks ago he released a "Colony Collapse" EP which precedes a full length "Loot LP" to be released on Muti Music on 3rd April. This will be also the beginning of Filastine's one your world tour from Berlin to Tokyo and Brasil to Bangladesh! "Colony Collapse" features remixes by Beats Antique, Squeaky Lobster, L’Ouef Raide and Fletcher in Dub. The title track is built on a rolling, grinding bass with the acompaniament of traditional, indonesian Gamelan orchestra from Sanur, Bali (oh my sweet Bali, I left a good part of my heart in enchanting Sanur!) and featuring beautiful vocals of Nova, a rapper and singer from Malang, Indonesia. I really, really dig this mixture of occidental dubstep and oriental melodies. Beats Antique brought the track to yet another level adding even more instruments to the mix. My favorite remixer, Squeaky Lobster focused strongly on glitchy distortions and seriously cut-up beat, while refixing gamelan bells into tinkling background of an infectious and ethereal sonic trip. L'Oeuf Raide stripped down Colony Collapse into a minimal, future bass thing, whereas Fletcher in Dub, hailing from Capetown, closes the EP with dark dub full of powerful drums. In general, "Colony Collapse" is a tasty, eclectic package, proving that intelligent producers are still succesfully using dubstep formula, at least as the starting point in their music explorations.
Filastine - Colony Collapse by Post World Industries
Colony Collapse video leaves no doubt about the general concept followed by the artist in his "Loot" LP. It is filmed at sites of ecological friction, the fault lines of conflict between humanity and nature. Filastine & team entered into industrial disasters, floods, traffic snarls and scaled a mountain of garbage to show you the slow-motion apocalypse, uncomfortably close and personal.
In "Loot" Filastine looted the cofers of dubstep, moombahton, cumbia, hip hop, baile funk, rich traditional music scene and even 8-bit nintendo, mixing everything into a big transnational bass feast. In his music statement, he gathered his experience, field recordings and sound samples from travels across the globe, from Morocco through Rio de Janeiro and Asia to Barcelona. But "Loot" is definitely NOT just another trendy transnational moombahton/bass release, it is much more. A work of very self-conscious artist who not only entertains his listeners, showing them the diversity and depth of world music, but who also tries to draw their attention to painful problems of our beautiful Gaia. I believe this concept works quite well. "Loot" comes out on Tuesday, April 3rd at most of the Interweb music dealers. I really encourage you to have a listen, dear fellow Earthlings and support Filastine, because he is doing a very fine job.
