Revival

Atavistic office breakdown: see The Salarymen go wild in third episode of Filastine’s Abandon video series- https://youtu.be/5Al3sjPa_9M

It is morning in the office of an anonymous startup at the dawn of the digital age, circa 1996. Beige walls entomb data serfs pecking at workstations, unaware that the world is about to flip upside down. Welcome to the latest episode of Abandon, a video series on liberation from work by the artists Filastine. 

Filastine are an Indonesian and American duo based in Barcelona, who combine bass-heavy electronic music with, image, movement and ideas to trespass borders. They have earned a dedicated international following for their otherworldly music and intense live performances. 

Their current project, Abandon, fuses video art, documentary, and music to explore how we sell our time on earth, and the ways we imagine getting free. Each of the four episodes profiles a unique personal revolt against low-valued work: an Indonesian miner, a Portuguese maid, American office workers, and Spain’s scrap metal salvagers. 

‘Salarymen’ brings Abandon into the office, at the very moment in history when computers first began to dominate our lives. But the dreams of a frictionless technocracy quickly hit a glitch: “the CRT screens are taken over by hypnotizing video feedbacks, triggering seizures in the workers,” explains Grey Filastine.  “The data serfs reject the machines, seek out anything natural, from the potted plants to the animals within themselves.”

To embody the salarymen, Filastine tapped the Seattle butoh dance trio P.A.N. “We have a long history of collaboration, some of our first tracks were made for P.A.N. performances,” Filastine notes. “This story was made for them: atavistic, raw.” Setting the scene for this office catharsis, Filastine sourced obsolete computers and period motivational posters to build a space of perfect spiritual emptiness.

‘Salarymen’s music also features vintage electronics, the squelching leads and lo-fi textures of classic synthesizers. “We used the same musical instruments that Kraftwerk played in their teutonic love songs to the robot, but bent the circuits for an opposite effect; the synths are harmonized with mechanical hums, and driven by percussive mouse clicks and qwerty keystrokes.”

Salarymen will be available in spring of 2017 on Filastine's coming album, Drapetomania.

Abandon

Salarymen

TINNITUS: 10.10

los angeles native, dyed in the wool hooligan zeroh gets loud, technical and strange all over again on his new ten track album TINNITUS [HNR65]. organized noise was haphazardly strung together and embellished amongst 15+ hours of music in a dark smokey garage on little to no sleep. the severity of this raw bludgeoning echoes pain in the heads and ears of your typical everyman in an attempt to bring them to higher state of consciousness. zeroh emanates a low glowing light close to the chest... the one saving grace for this genius god awful cacophony.

*Pre-order the album on Bandcamp now and receive immediate downloads of three tracks.

Revival

Feastius

Related tracks