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Album Review
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The Secret Archives of the Vatican, Album Review >>
Album review: Loot by Filastine
March 30, 2012
by Vince Millett
I’ve had two previous albums by Barcelona-based Filastine for a while, Burn It (2006) and Dirty Bomb (2009). They’re demanding, eclectic, works that require some effort to engage from the listener but ultimately provide a deeper reward than more mainstream ear-fodder is capable of delivering. There’s a clear but broad, scattergun, political edge to things, and the beats are rooted in all quarters of the globe. There’s a hiphop sensibility informing many tracks, layered with sounds, rhythms and melodic ideas from many nations.
‘It’s a balancing act: to split my efforts between activism and being a full-time artist,’ Filastine reflects, ‘but often I can bring a political element to people who are just looking for music, as a kind of carrier wave alongside the music. What I do is life art: to treat the way I travel, survive, collaborate, learn and compose as one coherent method.’
His new release (early April 2012) is called £oot, presumably pronounced ‘Loot‘.
His PR people say this:
‘Transnational Electro-Bass A/V artist FILASTINE blends beautifully intense digital sound with found recordings ranging from metallic and apocalyptic to rootsie and soothing.’
They say this about the man himself:
‘An audio-visual nomad and percussionist, Filastine can simultaneously command the dancefloor, start a sonic street insurrection in Tokyo or Barcelona, and win over xenomaniacs worldwide with found objects, North African and Indian percussion, custom software, and video collage. He makes low-end rich, organic beats and images that speak to our ethical bankruptcy, pending environmental collapse, and alt-globalization possibilities. It’s Occupy breaking into bhangra shouts and samba parades, as gamelans and glitches multiply.’
Blimey. I wish I could bullshit to that standard! Anyway, Loot has a generous thirteen tracks, although only one exceeds five minutes in length. There’s still a hiphop vibe but there are hints of dubstep in some of the low-end sounds. As always, there are cool voice samples from who knows where, glitchy electronic textures and a few vocal tunes in a mostly instrumental album.
I like this album very much. It seems a little more instantly accessible than the two I mentioned above, with an overall, chilled, triphop theme that makes it easy to listen to but with enough eclectica pervading it’s beatscape to keep anyone’s attention. Recommended! 03/30/12 >> go there
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