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Filastine Orchestrates Dystopic Funeral March in ‘Requiem 432’ Video

Filastine

Barcelona musician Filastine makes dystopian bass music for crumbling urban futures. On Aphasia, his latest release for Post World Industries, the producer collapse sounds associated with disparate geographies—pentatonic scales from Middle Eastern music, rap and dubstep from the US and UK, the opulence of First World classical music, and the scarcity of production techniques in the Global South. Featuring help from Indonesian rapper/vocalist Nova, the EP is the soundtrack to a rising heat humidity index. Suffocating bass, creepy-crawly hi hat rolls, footwork’s urgency, and maudlin strings all emphasize displacement and decay at various points.

A funeral procession is the focus of the video for lead single “Requiem 432.” Its primary touchpoint is Cairo’s famous squat/necropolis, the City of the Dead, but there are also references to New Orleans jazz funerals in its Victorian styling and the song’s simulated brass and bounce percussion. Quick editing cuts reveal imposing cacti, intricate jewelry, snarling faces, all drained of color saturation from the searing sun. You wonder if the video’s subjects are the scavenging survivors of some cataclysm—former fat-cats who are clinging to their fading wealth and disintegrating currency after Albert Einstein’s World War IV of sticks and stones.