Filastine is the duo of composer/director Grey Filastine and vocalist/designer Nova Ruth. Before starting Filastine in 2006, Grey spent much of his life recording soundscapes & studying rhythm across the world. One of those travels brought him to Indonesia in 2010 where he met Nova, formerly of the hip-hop group Twin Sista. Nova added her rich musical roots to Filastine’s sound, she grew up
singing pentecostal spirituals with her preacher grandfather, koranic recitations in the mosque, and studied Javanese gamelan. Filastine’s compositions fuse contemporary electronic beats with concrete sounds, voices, percussion, and acoustic strings. This is future bass music from a future where the globe has been flipped the sonic territories remixed, and syncopated mid-eastern rhythms and Asian melodies shape a new urban sound. Filastine have released a trilogy of full-length albums, a half dozen vinyls on an equal number of record labels, and a grip of heady conceptual mixtapes.
Beyond music, Filastine uses video, design, and now dance, as forms of universal language to communicate their vision of the world. Last year Filastine debuted 4RRAY, their multi-screen AV setup that uses custom-made software to sync video to music. These arts combine in powerful, cinematic, live performances. Filastine has performed nearly five hundred gigs in thirty-seven different nations, from music festivals : Flow (FI), Sonar (ES), Decibel(US), Les Vieilles Charrues (FR), WOMEX (UK), to art spaces: V&A
Museum (UK), Foreign Affairs (DE), Erarta Museum (RU) to
ephemeral places: Calais Jungle migrant camp (FR), Downtown Cairo Arts (EG), Hidden Agenda (HK).
