FILASTINE & NOVA
Country: Grey Filastine (USA), Nova Ruth (Indonesia). Based in Barcelona, Spain
Label: Jarring Effects/ Muti Music/ Post World Industries /Soot Records
Instrumentation:
Grey: electronics, percussion
Nova: vocals, melodica, drums
Filastine & Nova are a multimedia duo working to undermine borders. Their music collides electronic beat production with dense layers of voice, concréte sounds, analogue synths and strings. Spin magazine calls it “bass music for crumbling urban futures,” and Pitchfork says “they sound less like `world’ music and more like music from another world.” Another world is exactly what they aim to create, using sound, video,design, and dance to express a radically different vision of the possible.
Filastine is the handle of Barcelona-based composer and video artist Grey Filastine. A former taxi driver from the United States, Filastine studied percussion with the coke-fueled carnival batucadas of Brazil and mystical brotherhoods in Morocco. In 1999 he founded the Infernal Noise Brigade marching band, putting these rhythms to use in a live soundtrack for the Seattle WTO revolt and the globalization protests that followed. DJ/Rupture discovered and released Filastine’s premiere album, Burn It! (2006), launching a decade of critically-acclaimed albums and world tours. One of those tours brought him to Jakarta where he met vocalist Nova Ruth, rhyming in Indonesia’s seminal rap group Twin Sista. Nova’s deep musical roots add much to Filastine’s sound; she was raised singing pentecostal spirituals with her priest grandfather, reciting Quran, and playing Javanese gamelan percussion. Beyond music, Nova’s continues her “day job” building networks among Southeast Asia’s video activists and hackers.
Together they create unique and fearless interventions: an official mixtape for The Act of Killing documentary, a sound swarm at the Paris Climate Summit, a performance in the Calais Jungle migrant camp. Their latest effort, Abandon, is a video series profiling dances of emancipation from work, filmed in locations from coal mines in Borneo to office cubicles in America. The songs of Abandon and a grip of other new tracks will come out this year on the duo’s first full album together, Drapetomania, colliding psychedelic trap, tropical post-folk and a punk ethos into a compelling audio thesis.
Filastine & Nova are foremost performing artists, their live show is where sound, image, and ideas are embodied. They’ve toured the five continents, appearing at festivals such as Sonar (ES), Downtown Cairo Arts (EG), Decibel (US), Les Vieilles Charrues (FR), Foreign Affairs (DE), Mona Foma (AU). For the new Drapetomania performance the duo are working with a guest dancer and cinematic multi-screen visuals to conjure an emergency exit from the
PRESS
Powerfully political and distinctly global – NPR Music
Dystopian bass music for crumbling urban futures. the soundtrack to a rising heat humidity index -Spin Magazine
The prototype of globalized urban sound -Prefix Mag
Filastine creates tracks so geographically and chronologically diverse that they sound less like “world” music and more like music from another world. PitchforkTV
A hybrid electronic sound that could be described as worldbeat for the dubstep generation – and the result is a lot better than it sounds -MTV Iggy
Filled with both jagged edges and moments of sad sweetness…sure to win fans across multiple scenes”-XLR8R “visceral, disorienting exotica -The Stranger
Live stage show couples virtuoso live drumming and electronic grooves with a visual spectacle that holds crowds spellbound -San Francisco Bay Guardian
An uncompromising, unfettered alternative soundtrack to Life On Earth -Discontent
About £OOT in Pitchfork
LINKS
http://filastine.com
https://filastine.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/filastine
https://www.facebook.com/FilastineArt/
VIDEO
Abandon is a quarterly series of audiovisual singles by Filastine. Each video episode profiles a cathartic dance of liberation from work staged in a unique environment. Abandon explores how we use the human body, how we sell our time, and how we can dare to escape.
March 29 The Miner (Borneo & Java, Indonesia) an escape from extraction
May 26 The Cleaner (Lisbon, Portugal) a maid sheds her invisibility
Sept. 22 The Salarymen (Seattle, USA) a day at the office interrupted by a glitch
Feb. 28 The Chatarreros (Barcelona, Spain) a choreography of migrant scrap collectors
The music of Abandon is available on the album Drapetomania.
LIVE PROMO
MUSIC VIDEO
LIVE IN CONCERTS
Discography
Drapetomania (2017) (Jarring Effects)
£OOT (Jarring Effects/ Muti Music/ Post World Industries 2012)
Extra Dirty Bomb (12”- Post World Industries/ES 2010)
We Are Experiencing Turbulence (mix radio broadcast AU/BE/US)
Hungry Ghosts (7”- Disboot/ES 2010)
Dirty Bomb (CD- Jarring Effects/FR, Soot/US, Romz/JP, UberLingua/AU 2009)
Sonar Calibrado- w/ Maga Bo (12”- Shockout/US 2008)
La Pistola Mas Rapida (mix CD IrregularRhythmAsylum/JP)
Quemalo Ya (12” Shockout/US 2007)
The Mud, the Blood, & the Beer (mix CD-Tigerbeat6/US)
Burn It Instrumentals (12”- Soot/US 2007)
Burn It (CD- Soot/ES, Romz/JP, Jarring Effects/FR, Crimethinc/US 2006-2007)
Judas Goat/Palmares (7”- Soot/US 2005)
PHOTOS
Link to download http://morezvukov.nl/wp-content/gallery/filastine/
