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An intercontinental soundclash

Dirty Bomb, genre melding Spanish producer Filastine’s second artist album, juxtaposes scattered and mutated hip hop with underground beats ethnographic ephemera with a deft touch. Although ostensibly a solo album, Dirty Bomb features a range of cameos from guests including Australian Wire MC, French/North African rapper Rabbah and other global members of the Filastine crew. Comparisons to sonic comrades such as DJ/Rupture and Maga Bo are relevant to Filastine’s approach to music, through his intercontinental take on the soundclash. Over Dirty Bomb’s 17 tracks, Filastine explores the missing links between native musics of the Iberian and North African regions and contemporary Western electronic music, treating all genres with necessary respect to create an outstanding synthesis of aural cultures. B’Talla is an obvious highlight, with Filastine’s raw productions mixing middle eastern melodies with tracker software and Rabbah’s slightly menacing French rapping. Perhaps not surprisingly, Dirty Bomb as a whole is an exercise in subtle and overt guerrilla politics, with the source materials and artwork rejecting the homogenisation and cultural imperialism so rampant in many ‘world music’ productions.

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ANDREW TUTTLE

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