Disquiet

The website for the bilingual, Mexico-based netlabel Filtro, filtro.com.mx, says it’s still in beta, but the music is fully functional. The eighth and latest entry in Filtro’s steady release of free downloads is an EP of what it calls “abstract laptop-hip hop” (or, in Spanish, “abstract laptop-hip hop”): Kampion‘s four-track Invisible. A pseudonym for Guillermo Guevara, of the Duopandamix team on Static Discos, Kampion knows how to keep things simple. His music is almost entirely rhythmic, chops of sound that dance and shuffle like a debonair robot. For those seeking a specifically “.mx” spin on instrumental hip-hop, “Routes” is the key track on Invisible, in that it’s the most evidently Latin, with percussion samples that suggest an old Command Classics stereo-demonstration album, cut’n'spliced for the early 21st century. With Kampion’s terse samples bounding between your speakers, you can just about picture the Josef Albers cover art.

By Marc Weidenbaum