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Algiers, Stereo, Glasgow

  • Published in Live

 

Stereo is nearly full by the time the stage is set for tonight's show with the band’s instruments and four red vertical strip lights. When the lights are dimmed, they provide a feeling both warm and menacing, something that the band will seek to also achieve in the performance of their songs. 

Algiers, touring in support of new album There Is No Year, have been described as post-punk, gospel, soul and experimental noise. They are all and none of these. They manage an original trick of being neither a fusion nor a confusion of the various styles that they draw on. There is an amazing balance in transitions between the beats of a metallic Motown and the angry energetic protest of gospel punk. The lyrics are shot through with both dread and hope. Nothing here is meant to be wholly comfortable.

Lead singer Franklin Fisher’s voice soars then wails on ‘Dispossession’ backed by an almost dissonant chorus from the others. Bassist Ryan Mahan irregularly pops dance moves between keeping a throbbing industrial beat pulsing throughout the proceedings. A lead guitar is swapped for a free-jazz saxophone break. Yet, the set never loses its way. ‘Unoccupied’ is one highlight that gets all the crowd moving. It is a prime example of a great swinging beat that is undershot by industrial noise and '80s synthesizer power chords which the band craft into something both danceable and frightening in equal measure. 

This is music for dislocated times. It has sing-a-long choruses and soul beats flipping into noise breaks and back again. The band have touched an essence of uncertainty in the modern world and the audience can be sure they have heard a bit of the broken truth of it tonight.

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Algiers Release New Song And Video

  • Published in News

Algiers have debuted new track and video ‘We Can’t Be Found’, taken from the London/NYC four-piece’s highly anticipated third album, There Is No Year, out January 17 on Matador Records. The mesmerising visual for the sinuous, dub-inflected song, which builds to a soaring, cascading chorus, propelled by the powerhouse vocals of frontman Franklin James Fisher, was directed by Ian Cone. “I always feel the most successful music videos are the ones that are reflective and convey the mood of the song to the listener over everything else,” says guitarist Lee Tesche. “In this instance, we collaborated with the artist Lloyd Benjamin, trying to frame some of his sculpture work in a more abstracted way, referencing the urban dystopian cityscapes found in the German expressionist films of the 1930s. The result aspires to be somewhere in between the unsettling work of Darius Khondji and the set design of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Fritz Lang's Metropolis.”

‘We Can’t Be Found’ follows the release of ‘Void’, accompanied by a visceral live video shot in the band’s hometown of Atlanta, as well as the video for ‘Dispossession’, filmed in the Noisy le Grand suburbs of Paris. Kicking off their 2020 live run with a series of US instore performances the week of release, Algiers touch down in London on February 5 for a headline show at London’s Village Underground, alongside dates in Brighton, Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds, before continuing to European and North American legs.

There Is No Year was recorded in New York throughout 2019 by childhood friends and Atlanta natives Franklin James Fisher, Ryan Mahan and Lee Tesche, as well as drummer Matt Tong (ex-Bloc Party), alongside producers Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Oren Ambarchi) and Ben Greenberg (Zs, Uniform, The Men). The album is titled after author and fellow Atlanta native Blake Butler’s novel of the same name, a major inspiration to the band over the course of the album’s making.

There Is No Year encompasses future-minded post-punk R&B from the trapped heart of ATL, where they began; to industrial soundscapes à la 4AD-era Scott Walker or Iggy & Bowie’s Berlin period; to something like the synthetic son of Marvin Gaye and Fever Ray. The whip-tight rhythm section of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mahan and Matt Tong moves back and forth from infectious menace to sci-fi soundtrack to big band fever dream. Mahan’s beat programming and synth constructions fill out the fibrous threshold, while Tesche’s sound-sleeves and aural-layering shapeshift into a richly polished means of exploration, revealing more and more the deeper you delve.”

FEBRUARY UK HEADLINE TOUR:

3.2 Brighton – The Haunt

5.2 London – Village Underground

6.2 Manchester – YES

7.2 Glasgow – Stereo

10.2 Leeds – Brudenell

 

 

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