LAL

Deportation is state violence. Policing is state violence. There are long histories of struggles waged against state violence that can and DO inform the contemporary moment. Solidarity with organizers across borders today seeking to end violence and usher in more liveable futures for all.

New film and single (links in bio) for Can’t Fail Me from my April 2026 album, Assigned Country Singer At Birth. Get ready for some creative uses of cowboy hats!

“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.”
– Susan Sontag

The Measure of the World By attending to the vibrant specificity of Black life, poet Dionne Brand contests the cruel mathematics of empire.

“Innocence, she told me, is ‘the gift of dominance, or of one’s favorable adjacency to it—the proposition that it is possible to not see, which capital can buy depending on your relationship to it.’”

jewishcurrents.org/the-measure-...

👇🏾

Changing your relationship with social media to cut back on needless nonsense is very helpful during these times. It feels good to have pointless drama come to you and not know anything about it because your attention is where it matters most.

“We must get closer to the essence of life “ Rest in peace Andy Bey

No one deserves detention.

No one deserves deportation.

No one deserves prison.

No one deserves to be separated from their loved ones.

No human is illegal. Free them all.

Dionne Brand : Salvage : Readings from the Wreck - Tin House What does it mean that a life can not only be animated by books but destroyed by them? That a self can be not only made by reading, but unmade by it? Dionne Brand’s latest book of nonfiction Salvage: ...

Congratulations to Dionne Brand for winning the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize in Nonfiction for Salvage: Readings from the Wreck.
ICYMI: here is our deep dive together into Salvage:
Audio📻🔥: tinhouse.com/podcast/dion...
@fsgbooks.bsky.social

"…in the bland “utopia” of value pluralism, where one thing is as good as the next, there are musics that hunt for an exit."
– S.D. Chrostowska, Utopia in the Age of Survival

LAL - Self Defence

Rubbish - Featuring Rae Spoon

With our friend and long time collaborator @raespoon.bsky.social
A cover of “Rubbish “
From our “Find Safety” Album

Video by Nicholas Murray

#selfdefence #Rubbish #baby #LAL #Raespoon #memory

LAL Get Rae Spoon, Lee Paradise, SlowPitchSound for 'Self Defence' After dropping Spectacular back in 2023, Toronto duo LAL — Nicholas Murray and Rosina Kazi — are back with a new project, enlisting some lo

LAL Get Rae Spoon, Lee Paradise, SlowPitchSound for 'Self Defence'

LAL (2x Long List) have released 'Self Defence.'

LAL Self Defence - Out today #covers #remixes

Rubbish - Rae Spoon, by LAL from the album Self Defence

New collabs album from @lalforest.bsky.social! I adore @raespoon.bsky.social's cover of "Rubbish".

LAL - Self Defence

Our now on @bandcamp.com

Video by Jaek Eastcott

Coming this Friday on @bandcamp.com - Self Defence

“I came to the city and it wasn't the city yet. It wasn't any place and I began there.”

Dionne Brand

This is a small excerpt from a song by Hampton Gerbrandt, a Black trans artist living in Vancouver. This show was in 2019 at Unit 2, a Do-it-Together space run by @lalforest.bsky.social team and community. Love them, love Hampton, love this space. Thankful for community!

YouTube video by LAL - Topic White Coat

Multi-time nominees LAL have a new song called "White Coat."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhmW...

White Coat
Turn Water into Blood (Phen Ray Remix)
Comes Out Friday Jan 31st

We are fine
In our trembling
In our fear
Our silence holds lifetimes of
Beauty and bloodshed
To Love deeply 
And Honestly 
Beyond sorrow
That sings softly 
With the wind
They’ve danced battles
Moved in chaos with lovers
Kissing wounds 
That close and open
We find moments of release

Pink and Purple rooms