After three albums, the Atlantans have faced down
racism, repression and commercial indifference – but, they say, pessimism is the easy way out
Last February, Algiers released one of the most extraordinary tracks of 2019. Can the Sub_Bass Speak? was a five-minute collage of free-jazz sax, drums and sampled southern US spirituals, over which Franklin Fisher recounted the insults and misconceptions he has received as the African-American frontman of this uncategorisable group – ranging from: “You remind me of Lenny Kravitz” to, “Fuck your experience … you ain’t from the hood”.
Sitting in a
London cafe with his bandmate, bassist Ryan Mahan, Fisher explains that he wrote it “so that I would never have to discuss my race any more with the white media. They don’t understand what you’re doing as a person of colour in a context that is not – very reductively – black.”