Releases
ALGIERS - THERE IS NO YEAR INDI EXCL LP / LP + 7" / CD IN STORES JAN 17
On the back of their much-acclaimed standalone piece “Can The Sub_Bass Speak?,” Algiers return in
2020 with their third album ‘There Is No Year’, set for release January 17.
Under the direction of producers Randall Dunn [Sunn O))), Earth] and Ben Greenberg (Zs, Uniform [as
featured on Twin Peaks season 3]), There Is No Year encompasses future-minded post-punk R&B from
the trapped heart of ATL, where they began, industrial soundscapes à la 4AD-era Scott Walker or Iggy &
Bowie’s Berlin period and something like the synthetic son of Marvin Gaye and Fever Ray.
The album was recorded over the past year by childhood friends and Atlanta natives Franklin James
Fisher, Ryan Mahan and Lee Tesche, as well as drummer Matt Tong, in New York.
Those aware of the ideals of this outspoken four-piece will find their latest direction on There Is No Year
traversing unprecedented ground. Coming off two years of nonstop world-touring for their critically
acclaimed second album, The Underside of Power—including Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic
States and the Balkans, where they have established a rabid following; an extended stint opening for
Depeche Mode in huge stadiums such as the 75,000-capacity Olympiastadion in Berlin; as well as
Glastonbury 2019—There is No Year solidifies and expands upon the doom-laden soul of their
foundation, toward an even vaster, genre-reformatting sound, one somehow suspended in the amber of
“a different era,” as described by guitarist Lee Tesche.
The clip for album track Dispossession was filmed in the Noisy le Grand commune in the eastern
Suburbs of Paris amidst modern architectural landmarks such as Le Palacio d’Abraxas and Les Arènes
de Picasso – and including images from the band’s visit to Algiers during the uprising in March 2019—
“Dispossession” captures one thread of Algiers’ expansive, future-oriented new body of work. The song
features additional vocals from Cleveland’s Mourning [A] BLKstar.
Beginning a global tour in Feb. 2020, the band return to Canada April 6th for a date in Toronto ( Baby
G’s) and April 7 in M o n t r é a l (Bar Le Ritz).
Formed in London in 2012 by Fisher, Mahan and Tesche, friends from Atlanta who had been playing
music together since childhood, the band recruited drummer Matt Tong (ex-Bloc Party) and signed to
Matador in 2014. Since, they have toured relentlessly and released two massively acclaimed albums,
2015’s self titled and their breakthrough 2017 sophomore LP The Underside of Power.
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. The
effect, as felt on the record, is undeniable: Fisher sounds like he is singing for his life—for all our lives,
really—baring his soul while the walls disintegrate around us.
The pool that he draws on is at once penetrating and exhilarating, wielding its anguish like a mirror at
Medusa, full of hell. 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.
Selections:
1. There Is No Year
2. Dispossession
3. Hour of the Furnaces
4. Losing is Ours
5. Unoccupied
6. Chaka
7. Wait for The Sound
8. Repeating Night
9. We Can’t Be Found
10. Nothing Bloomed
