Algiers
Algiers (DEAD)
Entry Requirements: All Ages
Rock, gospel, post-punk, industrial, soul... this is the genre-bending brilliance of Algiers.
"For now these hot days is the mad blood stirring, and here’s the soundtrack to accompany it." - Drowned in Sound
Locally-informed and globally based – spread between London, Atlanta and New York – Algiers refuse to sit idly by while most contemporary artists appear perfectly content to wait out the revolution. Not only harboury harbor a purposeful sense of obligation in what they do on their latest resistance record, The Underside Of Power, but they recognize the roots and thorns of precedent in said resistance. It was one of the finest albums of 2017, receiving rave reviews from critics and long-time fans. The AV Club awarded it a perfect score:
"This record might not justify the trying times under which it was created—what art could?—yet it captures them in a way that provides both comfort and catharsis to those who would resist. It’s an album we need right now, and will surely, sadly need again."
Fortunately, the multiracial quartet Algiers provides more than mere distraction, but rather a revelatory creative release and wholesale rejection of the globally normative corporate playlist culture. Poke at the feverish surface, and out come wafting touchpoints as disparate and intriguing as Big Black, Wendy Carlos, John Carpenter, Portishead, Public Image Limited, Steve Reich, and Nina Simone. Deep echoes of Black Lives Matter and its 20th century forbears gather, surge, and subside in their often soulful work, a form of principled, acute dissent more interested in learning from the past than in evoking nostalgia.
Simply put, this is set to be an unmissable show.
"Righteous, vicious and vital. If the world is a stage, then at the moment it’s hard to think of a better house band than Algiers" - musicOMH 10/10
"A collection of songs that articulates that fury and despair with such authority, it deserves to become the soundtrack for whatever future documentary montage captures the mess of 2017" - The AV Club 10/10
"It’s disarming, actually, how an album this heavy can be so kinetic, so compulsive, so--the word seems wrong, but funky" - Drowned in Sound 9/10
"Solid, sonic proof that Algiers are capable of not just acting with their hearts, but ripping them out and offering them up on record" - The Quietus 8/10