Rage against the machine

"We all dance into the fire", sings Franklin James Fisher on Algiers' There Is No Year, a record that I described in a Buzz review as "a complex, righteous, soulful LP both infuriated and fatally fatigued by the failed state that is the US". It's little wonder that a band who have long been outspoken about racial injustice should have plenty to say on the subject since the murder of George Floyd caused the tinderbox situation to explode.

In an article for the Quietus, multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mahan writes about the symbolic significance of tearing down statues and the urgent need to acknowledge "the twin killing engines of global colonial finance capitalism and white supremacist violence". Only by doing so, and recognising they are "so insidious and entrenched", can we begin to dismantle the structures that perpetuate racial inequality and violence.