Drummer Matt Tong (second from proper) with the members of Algiers. The band launched its fourth album, Shook, in early 2023.
Ebru Yildiz/Courtesy of the artist
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Ebru Yildiz/Courtesy of the artist
Drummer Matt Tong (second from proper) with the members of Algiers. The band launched its fourth album, Shook, in early 2023.
Ebru Yildiz/Courtesy of the artist
Take heed to the opening minutes of Shook, the 2023 album by the Atlanta-born, transatlantically based mostly, globally minded quartet Algiers, and also you may marvel what’s develop into of the drummer. For a track and a half, the one pulse is machine-made: first, a shopworn pattern from “Subway Theme,” the click-clack beat that raised the curtain on cult hip-hop movie Wild Model in 1983; then, a sprig of hi-hat artillery mined from Zambian rock however solid within the digital furnace of Ableton Dwell. It is solely within the remaining 60 seconds of “Irreversible Harm” that sticks meet skins in actual area: Following a verse from rap-rock warhorse Zack de la Rocha, the track’s industrial rattle pivots to the unfastened double time of Mediterranean folks, and a cloud of bashed cymbals and swung toms rolls in, nudging these inflexible intervals off the grid.
Matt Tong’s fashionably late arrival to this get together hits twice as exhausting for individuals who bear in mind him from his previous job. The British-born New York drummer launched himself to the world in far splashier style with “Like Consuming Glass” — the cannonballing opener from the 2005 debut by his earlier band, Bloc Social gathering — on which he builds from a faint murmur to an insistent garagelike loop that withstands dozens of exhausting swerves, lifeless stops and unsettled fills whereas solely gaining in momentum, till it seems to lap itself. On his 4 albums with the band, he reduce a slender lane by way of post-punk’s nice millennial revival: detailed however by no means cluttered, with a martial focus that by no means excluded the listener. He’d clearly grown up with the identical blacklit ’80s information as his friends, however onstage, he usually gave the impression to be having probably the most enjoyable.
These instincts weren’t misplaced on the members of Algiers, who recruited Tong in 2015 after he’d left Bloc Social gathering, first as a touring anchor for his or her fractured preparations and shortly as a real bandmate. Shook finds him as embedded as ever within the egalitarian imaginative and prescient conceived by singer Franklin James Fisher, bassist Ryan Mahan and guitarist Lee Tesche, which extends past their progressive politics: Within the studio, any member may choose up any instrument they’ll get a sound out of, and songs emerge as city-sized quilts of concepts, not often spotlighting particular person chops. The brand new album options visitor appearances by a dozen exterior contributors, from Dungeon Household soothsayer Large Rube to Future Islands growler Sam Herring, whose names fill a block of textual content on the album’s entrance cowl. (In just a few spots, it is not even Tong you hear behind the equipment — the drummer entrusted producer Matt Ricchini to carry out the elements he could not be within the room for, after Shook‘s manufacturing schedule collided with the beginning of his first son.)
For such a particular, exuberant participant, raised within the period of college-radio darlings gone Hollywood, Algiers’ collectivist vibe would appear an unlikely match. Tong, now 44, says it is precisely the place he must be. From a tour cease in Austria, Tong joined me on Zoom to debate the fluid function of the rock drummer and the worth of treating the music business like a group, even when it is exhausting.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Daoud Tyler-Ameen: While you carry out with Algiers, you are usually enjoying together with pre-recorded samples. To try this, you type of need to give up the drummer’s canonical function as timekeeper: The playback has remaining say over how briskly or gradual you go, and in case you drift away from it you may be in hassle. Is {that a} restrictive feeling, or is it liberating in some methods?
Matt Tong: It is restrictive insofar as there are many heart-in-the-mouth moments. We’re a really bold band, and very often we attempt to do extra onstage, and produce extra tools, than a bunch of individuals in a van actually ought to be carrying round on tour. It does not take a lot for a misplaced limb to disconnect one thing: The opposite night time, Ryan by chance ejected the SD card with all of the tracks on it halfway by way of a track, so we needed to fudge our means by way of it. However one thing that is liberating for me is, that a part of my mind that has to consider timekeeping simply switches off. And I do naturally begin enjoying a bit forward or behind the beat given no matter temper I am feeling; you’ll be able to nonetheless subtly affect the way in which a track comes throughout dwell doing that.
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You already know, I am notoriously sloppy at timekeeping. You do not have to wade by way of too many dwell Bloc Social gathering evaluations to seek out somebody going, “Matt Tong sucks! He is enjoying the songs too quick! It is everywhere!” However I used to be at all times rather more of a temper drummer, I assume. For me, it is completely pure to hurry up a bit through the refrain, or if the viewers are actually into it. I am like that, and I am completely joyful to suck up any flack that comes my means due to it. The drummers I at all times appeared as much as have been like that.
Do you consider what you do as serving a track — as in, there is a composition that already totally exists, and also you’re including on high of it? Or do you view it extra as co-creation, the place your drumming is as a lot part of a track’s essence as the rest? As a result of Algiers is a kind of teams the place the traces between songwriting and association, between composition and instrumentation, appear extraordinarily blurred.
Yeah, completely. I believe particularly on this band, I am serving the music, and that was at all times my intention going into it. Everybody’s conscious of what I can do: I do write music, and I really feel considerably inventive. I might wish to assume by now that the opposite members and collaborators of this band perceive that I am open to performing any variety of roles. However I am not going to pressure the problem until somebody actually wants me to. … Typically the job of a musician is not essentially to truly play one thing. Typically it is simply to validate another person’s concept, or to make a suggestion that nudges them into a distinct path. It isn’t at all times about enjoying collectively.
It was very totally different again in Bloc Social gathering, as a result of on the time I joined the band, I do not assume they’d actually labored with a drummer who felt like a peer. And while I wasn’t as technically gifted as a few of their earlier drummers, I gave the impression to be a bit extra relatable to the remainder of the band, and we may truly discuss concepts. There was extra space for me to attempt to incorporate my very own imaginative and prescient into the songwriting.
That is smart — the albums you made with Bloc Social gathering are organized in a means that basically provides every member their very own pedestal to play on. I am considering of a track like “Banquet,” which begins with 4 bars of simply drums. Then the 2 guitars are available, they usually’re panned exhausting left and exhausting proper. Then it is one other 30 seconds or so earlier than the bass is available in, so it actually declares itself.
That method implies that at any time, you’ll be able to clearly discern who’s doing what, and even the drums get a variety of highlight moments. The track “Like Consuming Glass” has this stuttery, actually distinctive drum half; despite the fact that there’s singing and melodic parts taking place, the drums are successfully the hook.
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It is humorous fascinated about that track now, as a result of I in all probability would not method it in the identical means. You already know, you are in your early or mid-20s and also you’re simply full of those concepts. You assume, effectively, you are solely going to get one likelihood to get all of them out — I’ll do as a lot as I can. However I’ve obtained to be completely sincere: Numerous that enjoying was knowledgeable by the truth that I am not significantly athletic. I at all times struggled with sports activities in school. And that drumming, I used to be at all times being requested to play quicker than I used to be ever snug with.
I heard you have been a heavy smoker on the time.
Yeah, I used to smoke a pack a day again then. The truth is, the very first rehearsal I did with that band, I needed to cease between each track, roll a cigarette and simply sit there smoking. And so a variety of that enjoying was knowledgeable by the truth that I might get actually drained — so I might attempt to change the elements a bit, and write one thing that felt totally different and fewer intense. That is why the drum elements type of evolve, or are so scattershot, all through that document. It is humorous considering how one’s means of being informs one’s sense of creativity.
One factor that units you aside out of your present bandmates is, you have got the bizarre privilege of getting come by way of a completely totally different period of indie rock — a world I might argue was a bit extra intense within the 2000s, no less than in the way it tended to create cliques and cults of persona. Listening to Shook, I think about one thing extra like a group barbecue, the place the person is much less prioritized. Your drumming will sneak right into a track partway by way of, then drop out for some time and let other forms of percussion take over. Even Franklin, the ostensible frontman, does not learn because the “star” of this album, since he is continually handing the mic off to the visitor vocalists you introduced in. Each alternative appears to serve a collective preferrred. Is {that a} consolation to you, having witnessed among the alternative ways a band could be?
Yeah, I believe it was actually necessary to probably not foreground any of us. One factor that is been odd for me on this band is being amongst a gaggle of people that, for the very first time of their lives, have been starting to be taught what changing into enmeshed in a touring cycle was like. The longer we floor out dates, the extra I may see how exhausting it was for the remainder of the band to confront that there are situations throughout the music business that make it nearly inconceivable for community-forming to exist in an actual, tangible kind. And one thing I actually liked from the start was this intent to achieve out and attempt to discover a group, to be open to assembly all method of various sorts of individuals on tour. … You see the way it runs by way of pop and hip-hop: Collaboration is beneficial and fertile and attention-grabbing, however a variety of the time it is a technique. Right here, there was this actual intent to point out that we are literally a part of a wider group.
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This can be a bizarre query, however do you consider Algiers as a rock band? I do know that labels are limiting and the style factor can really feel like type of a lure, however I am curious if self-identifying that means does something for you.
I imply, there is no easy reply. We have by no means lived in the identical metropolis, and even the identical nation, so we do not essentially carry that aura of a crew of people that hang around and eat and drink and dwell in one another’s pockets. Going into this album cycle is about as ready as we have ever been: We have performed like a month and a half of strong rehearsals, which we have by no means performed earlier than. There are occasions that I’ve actually struggled with that, and it has been fairly exhausting to determine the place I match. However I believe there’s at all times been this hope that perhaps we may function in opposition to among the extra conventional methods of fascinated about a band, and I believe in the end the music displays that.
Has it modified the way you write your elements? Do you permit extra damaging area round your self now?
I are usually much more restrained. It is no good me coming in there like I am 24, recording my first document, and simply doing each single factor I can consider — it is not gonna work, you recognize? So I save all that vitality for the dwell efficiency. And though I am beginning to really feel older in my physique, I wish to assume that I am nonetheless able to figuring out one thing I am unable to in any other case talk in day-to-day life as soon as I am up there onstage.
