Grey Filastine is an audio-visual artist born in Los Angeles, based in Barcelona, and often nomadic, studying trance rhythms in Morocco, recording rappers in Indonesia, and gathering street noise from everywhere to compose. 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.

2012 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.