Benefit CD for Operation Backfire Defendants
http://www.crimethinc.com/a/filastine/
Filastine “Burn It” Benefit CD
(click here to buy CD)
(click here to buy CD)
On December 7, 2005, the despicable lackeys of the FBI initiated “operation backfire,” a roundup of accused arsonists intended to intimidate all associated with ecologically oriented direct action. Most of the defendants in this witch-hunt eventually accepted plea bargains—some honorably, some dishonorably.
On December 7, 2006, the CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective released Filastine’s Burn It CD as a fundraiser to support the defendants who refused to become police informants. Filastine, a former member of ¡Tchkung! and founding participant in the Infernal Noise Brigade , has been drawing on musical traditions from all around the globe to compose incendiary anarchist music for well over a decade now. Burn It, a wide-ranging mélange of driving rhythms, electronic layering, on-site sampling, and multilingual vocals, has already been released in Europe to great acclaim. These 16 tracks successfully integrate analog and digital, political and party, experiment and entertainment—not to mention artistic traditions from Brooklyn to Indonesia.
A full $5 from every CD sale will go to the defendants, who face long stretches of prison time and massive debts. The extensive packaging, in which no plastic is used save that in the CD itself, includes a 12-page booklet providing a full background and commentary on their cases (download a PDF of the booklet here). Read more about Operation Backfire and the Green Scare at:
"The record's long list of singers, MCs, and musicians brings the songs to endlessly surprising and rich places, as well. Filastine layers artists from distant genres and locales with great architectural sense, and while at times the extremity of the juxtapositions borders on hilarious, the music always feels heroically well designed and strong in conception. On "Palmares," disaffected French oration is overlaid with clouds of gypsy-brass ennui, while party-starter "Judas Goat" lets the rhaita, one of the wailing horns of the Master Musicians, loose over beats that wouldn't be out of place propelling an Aaliyah cut. On some songs, Filastine's constructions are reminiscent of the murky drama of Ninja Tuners like Amon Tobin and DJ Food, and throughout the album the lines between live performed contributions and meticulously contextualized samples is slurred and burnt. The most emotional and fully realized pair of songs come about two-thirds in: "Boca de Ouro" alternates dizzy rhymes with a fuzzily cinematic chorus, and "Autology" is a slow-burning adaptation of an Indonesian song in which the intoxicatingly mournful singing of Jessika Skeletalia Kenney sails over a bed of screeching bowed bass and quicksand-sinking drum patterns.
"Overall, Burn It is a stunningly successful integration of varied international musical styles into the polyglot schemes of its maker; way beyond most "electronic world music" in both its conception and execution. Not unlike the Infernal Noise Brigade, Filastine absorbs music from all over the world and bends it (with all due respect) to his own designs. And, like the INB, he veers wildly between pointed polemic discourse and bacchanalian party embrace. In this way the album has more of a personal stamp and feeling of its creator than a lot of electronic music, as it deals—whether consciously or unconsciously—with these essential imperfections and warring forces in the dude that is Filastine."
-Sam Mickens
The Stranger
The Stranger
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