Grey Filastine is an audio-visual artist born in Los Angeles, based in Barcelona, and often nomadic. He composes a dense transnational bass music that collides the lowest frequencies of dubstep with the highest-level beat science, acoustic strings, voices, and lofi street noises. The results are “Awesome and delicate… hybrids so fluent they defy classification.” -Pitchfork Filastine’s debut record, Burn It, was released by DJ Rupture in 2006 to much critical acclaim: “Filled with both jagged edges and moments of sad sweetness… Burn It is sure to win fans across multiple scenes”- XLR8R. The album ricocheted around the world, licensed and re-released by labels in France, Japan, and the US. The follow-up album, Dirty Bomb, dropped in 2009 through an alliance of labels led by French electro-dub imprint Jarring Effects. Prefix Mag called it “the prototype of globalized urban sound… It will devastate your subwoofer.” Performing up to a hundred concerts per year, Filastine uses percussion to control loops and synchronized video from a heap of electronics wired to an amplified shopping cart. You may have seen him at a sweaty Tokyo nightclub, a football stadium in Casablanca, a respected euro-fest like Sónar, in a parking lot in Borneo, or touring the US with Bassnectar. Before making electronic music Filastine played with the Infernal Noise Brigade, a marching band he founded for the Battle of Seattle. He continues to use audio as a tool for political intervention with the Sound Swarm, an orchestra of bike-mounted megaphones conducted by pirate radios transmitters. 2011 will see the release of a new album and videos that reflect a tighter collaboration with Javanese vocalist Nova Ruth and Lyon-based cellist Amélie Bouard. Expect to find Filastine anywhere, crashing borders and transforming friction into beauty.
