Algiers today release new single ‘Void’, which is available to listen to HERE. The song was premiered by Adult Swim, as part of their Single Club series. It will appear on the Atlanta group’s third album, There Is No Year, released January 17th on Matador Records, and will be available as a special flexi disc edition with vinyl purchases.
‘Void’ is Algiers at their visceral, powerhouse peak – a three-minute adrenalin-surge of hypnotic and infectious breakneck fury, with Matt Tong’s galloping drums, guitarist Lee Tesche’s sound shards and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mahan’s inventive bass work coming together around frontman Franklin James Fisher’s feverish recitation: “And It’s coming around / It’s opportunity!”.
From the instant synth-pulse of the opening seconds of There is No Year, it’s clear that Algiers have set out to stake new ground, internally as much as sonically. At the forefront of this evolution is the centrality of power housed in Algiers’ multi-instrumentalist lead vocalist, Franklin James Fisher, whose voice and words provide the backbone of the album, his lyrics sourced entirely from an epic poem, “Misophonia,” composed during his search for meaning amidst a protracted personal period of anxiety and lack.
“What I wanted to do is create a negative space wherein I can exist and engage but at the same time not be so exposed,” Fisher explains. He speaks of the record’s perspective as not only a political apparatus, but an intimate, responsive evocation of his understanding that “nothing is ever what you expect”, that what might seem for now to be well known or assured is not always so, that there is no safety net. Whether he is lilting over post-Lynchian synth-whorl like a spot-lit bandleader, as on “Unoccupied,” or reincarnating the spirit of thrumming 80s R&B into a proto-no wave dancefloor classic straight from 2046, as on “Chaka,” there is a tangible emotional electricity to Fisher’s delivery, a personal valence that makes you want, more than anything, to believe, even while not quite knowing where we’re headed.
Under the direction of producers Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Oren Ambarchi) and Ben Greenberg (Zs, Uniform, The Men), 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 (ex-Bloc Party) 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.
Read the full album bio HERE.
Algiers online
