Archive | 1994 - Today | Trip-Hop, Art Rock, Progressive Rock, Electronic
“Violence is crushing, rushing and played by a brutal obession
To shatter the buildings and throw out the line, caught up with angels, distorted angels
This dream is fading now it is gone, cause you move from this world, with a stone left in your hand”
Distorted Angels (2014) from Axiom
I/ The Birth of a Sound
At the begining of the eighties, sitar notes start emanating from the walls. Mahmud Mizra is playing and an English boy from west London is listening carefully. Mizra is promoted by Mr. Keeler and lives in the house for a while. His son Darius keeps living in this atmosphere, between Indian and classical music. As a teenager, he tries many instruments, trumpet, French horn, piano and guitar. But the discovery that changes his life is the time he first sees an organ with a sequencer attached. That gets him into programming, a true revelation, and he starts making House music. Around the same time, Danny Griffiths grows up in a house where his sister keeps listening to reggae and soul, while people in his school are passionnate about hip-hop (Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy). Because it was a trend, Danny starts Djing hip-hop and House music, and meets Darius, an “odd-looking fellow with long hair and broken glasses and an old scarf.”
After a few years experimenting, both of them get bored of House music and Danny travels to Australia, leaving his mother to meet his father, someone he has never met. At that time, Darius thinks about starting a band. He meets Rosko John, a rapper from his neighbourhood who quickly becomes a great friend. They spent most of their days talking about music on rooftops, chilling with the sound of the nineties. That’s where they find the name “Archive” because Rosko said that making music requests that you know where it comes from. Darius and Rosko where both born at the time where hip-hop started to grow, so they witnessed how different influences from soul, jazz and funk shaped this new genre. Then Rosko goes to a Portishead concert and Roads is the detonator. He’s blown away by how dark and moody this music sounds. Then Danny comes back from Australia because his mother died and joins the project.
They are now looking for a female singer and finds Roya Arab through common acquaintances. Roya was born in Iran but had to flee to London because of the Iran revolution. People used to tell her she had a voice made for jazz and when she first heard Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, she decided that jazz would be her way of life. Then she meets Archive. Darius, Danny, Rosko and Roya finally craft Archive’s unique sound, to record a wonderful underground trip-hop album, moody and dark like Rosko wanted, political and airy thanks to Roya, with this brilliant signature sound Darius created on a Prophet synthesiser. 1996, Londinium is out. But the band hasnt’ the chance to tour because of rising tensions among them. They are young and all of them want an important place in the songwriting during the recording sessions. Unfortunately, all their ideas can’t work together, Roya and Rosko leave the band in 1997.
When working on their second album in 1997, they go for heavier sounds on You Make Me Feel, one of their finest, and Take My Head. But they also arrive in a new label, Independiente, and procuders get in the way. For the vocals, they contact Suzanne Wooder, somebody they know. She has a soft voice that fits well the production but the trio ends up quite unhappy with most parts of this album released in 1999, Take My Head. Darius thinks he needs more power and intensity in the vocals for their next project, so he tells Suzanne she would not be a part of the band’s future. He also starts working with one of their back singer, Maria Q. Later on, they join a new label, IE Management (Roxy Music, King Crimson, Robbie Williams) and the label tell them Archive can take as much time as they want for their new record. Darius posts an ad in NME saying they are looking for a singer and Craig Walker is the first to call.
Craig had a band in the nineties called Power of Dreams, but economic issues came in and they disbanded. Then he heard Darius mentioning The Doors and Pink Floyd as influences and he got really interested. The three of them also found themselves going through difficult times because of ending relationships. So they made an Archive break-up album about grief. They also start to mess up more with technology and get tempted by a more progressive and hypnotic approach of music. And that’s the time when they recorded their most ambitious and most famous song, Again, with the drummer Steve “Smiley” Barnard joining them. They write songs like Goodbye and Finding It So Hard and Craig vocals gave to Archive’s sound a new dimension, much more raw, emotional, and raging.
With Maria Q taking the lead on the short song Now and Then (her first appearance on the front row of the band), they release in 2002 their album You All Look the Same to Me, an album that didn’t do well in the UK because of their history with their former labels but started building an important fanbase in Europe, especially in France. At the end of one of their concert, Darius and Danny meet a French producer who’s working on a new film, Michel Vaillant, and wants them to do the soundtrack. This becomes a liberating process for the band but sadly the movie isn’t worth the watch. This is the first time Archive and filmmaking meet. With their experimental and hypnotic songs, it feels like the band was made to collaborate with the movie industry. And this is what will happen ten years later. But first, as soon as they finish the soundtrack, Archive go back to their studio to work on a more indie sound.
Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine became important influences and in 2004 they release Noise, an album full of anger because of how the world turned out at the time, with the Iraq war beginning. They write the song Fuck You as a letter to George Bush. Archive have always been political in their texts. With Londinium, they had Rosko John who came from a poor family, like Danny and Darius who all witnessed London’s gentrification as teenagers, and Roya Arab added new perspectives thanks to her experience in Iran. But Noise might be the first time this political side is that visible. They all think this album will launch their career in the States and the UK, but the label is sold and new problems get in the way. Craig Walker has an important meltdown when it happens and developps drinking issues. Craig leaves the band amicably. Once again, Archive is looking for a singer.
They knew Dave Pen from before, and he joins Archive to end the Noise tour with Maria Q gaining importance in the band, singing songs originally sung by Suzanne Wooder. But because Dave also has his band BirdPen, Darius wants to recruit another singer, also because Dave was more involved in the shows than the studio recordings. So now welcome Pollard Berrier. Pollard fell in love with this perfect mix between rock and electronic music, so he joins the band in 2006. Darius Keeler, Danny Griffiths, Dave Pen, Pollard Berrier and Maria Q finally form a stable collective where everyone has the space to share their songwriting ideas and create. Lights comes out in 2006. They try different things and release a more melodic and colourful album, climaxing with the eighteen-minute song-title Lights, immediately recognizable thanks to its first piano notes.
(From left to right) Rosko John, Danny Griffiths, Maria Q, Darius Keeler, Pollard Berrier, Dave Pen)
II/ Expansion and Control
Joined by Jethro Tull’s bassist Jonathan Noyce in 2007, Archive start working on their new project, Controlling Crowds Part I-III. Written at the end of the Bush-era, Rosko John comes back on this album to bring his hip-hop to a record that has the shape of a protest. They go back to heavier rhythm and everything grows bigger. Every vocalist has an important place here, with Maria Q singing her most impressive song Collapse/Collide. They record an orchestra and a choir for it, crafting a tensed atmosphere at the crossroads of many genres. And the most impressive thing is that this eclectism works beautifully. The same year also sees the release of the next chapter, with Dave Pen even more involved here, bringing a kind of therapeutic aura to the project. Finally, Archive create their own label Dangervisit, leaving IE Management, to gain control over everything they’re doing and the places where they want to go, especially the UK where they still haven’t much success.
After their political masterpiece about public opinion, capitalism and growing fears, Archive decides to focus on more intimate songs, inspired by Otis Redding’s soulfulness but with more experimental and twisted harmonies. For this project, they think hip-hop would not fit so well and Rosko leaves the band once again. They also have a new singer onboard, Holly Martin, a risky bet a the time since Holly has a more “pop” tone than the other members. But the strength she has perfectly fits the band, and that might come from her main influences, Robert Plant, Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley... She appears for the first time on the song Violently and then on Hatchet, a perfect way to introduce her to the audience, adding a new energy Archive will never leave. On With Us Until You’re Dead, the band delivers an album less consitent than before, but still having its moments of grace.
Another side of Archive’s history is under the table. In 2010, 2012 and 2019 they release three rare albums of B-sides and Rarities. I own 84 unreleased tracks coming from those demos and from live albums (unplugged and alternative versions as well as original songs) and they are way more than simple B-sides. Songs like I Will Find (demo), Mutilate, If You and In Every Scar could all have been on an Archive album. For some time, these “compilations” could only be purchased at their concerts, showing how important playing live was to them, the only way to possibly experience their music. Those albums are a way for every artist in the collective to experiment and shine one after the other. And this cohesiveness will bring them to another challenge, where, ten years after, they reunite with the filmmaking world.
Archive record their 2014-album Axiom really quickly, as if it was already there in their minds for all this time. It’s an album quite different from what they did before, 40-minute long only, but sounding like it was only made of one single track. They want to mark this difference and decide to shoot a film to accompany it. The Axiom film, made with the Spanish collective NYSU features black and white images about abstract and fragmented narratives. With its arthouse aesthetic, the film is premiered at the London Sundance Film Festival n 2014. Finally, the UK open their arms to embrace Archive’s music. The band tour in their homeland one sold-out show after the other. The film (uploaded on YouTube) perfectly portrays the multiple interconnections between the sounds and the images, because Archive’s music is always built around cinematic-like structures.
This prosperous period isn’t about to stop and they start to record love songs that at first could have been on a second half of Axiom. The beautiful Restriction comes out in 2015, less heavy and dark than its sister album With Us Until You’re Dead, easier to approach for the listener too (maybe not adventurous enough as well). Here they find a noteworthy harmony between each singer, Holly, Dave and Pollard. This album is less conceptual than the others, much more like a compilation of songs about love and the seek for freedom. To fit this mood, they shoot the cover of the album near the Jökulsarlon in Iceland, where the landscapes all point toward that feeling of freedom. Restriction is kind of the “Holly Martin album”, because she became really involved in the songwriting process, giving birth to one of Archive’s most moving song, End of Our Days.
In 2015 they start working on their last full studio album to date, The False Foundation, that wrongly received low reviews, not connecting with the fans because of the more experimental and lo-fi production, a real shift after Restriction. But if you really try to go deeper into listening to this album, you’ll find out it’s one of Archive’s most honest and emotional album. No Holly or Maria here, just the “boys” to record something dark, reminiscent of their older albums like Londinium, Noise and Controlling Crowds Pt.I-III, only less baroque. Darius Keeler spend fourteen months in the studio working on the production, refining it day after day with as much precision as he could. Darius also want the staging to fit the mood of the album and its clips, and the tour takes the form of an ominous experience to witness, as if you were really entering this False Foundation.
2019, 25 years after the band was born. Archive now want to bring other people in their songs to celebrate this anniversary while always moving forward. They work with Band of Skulls on Remains of Nothing and with Steve Mason on Lightning Love, two songs that are quite far from Archive's signature sound, but both bringing something new and fresh to their discography. Around that time, they also meet the young Welsh singer Lisa Mottram who impresses Darius because of her dark voice with an emotional vibrato. They record the song Hypperreal together and Holly starts working on Heart Beats, a fifteen-minute song that feels like a journey. The compilation 25 with sevent new songs is Archive's best album. Not only because some ot those seven songs are among Archive's best ones, but also because they built the tracklist to respect the moods an not the chronology. It's a real playlist through Archive's musical universe.
This album is accompanied by an anniversary tour, with a special show in Paris, the first time I saw them live. During three hours, featuring a ten-minute version of Numb and the complete version of Again with special guest Mike Peters from The Alarm playing the harmonica, they proved once again they are among the best live bands working today. In 2020, they released two albums, Versions and Versions Remixed to revisit their catalogue, nice gifts to the fans. But their challenges are far from over. n Friday, the 29th of April, Archive released Call to Arms & Angels, their twelfth studio album, divided in three parts, the last one being the soundtrack of a documentary about the creative process surrounding the making of this album. Since their beginnings, every member of Archive stepped up in their artistry, and this new album proved itself to be another landmark in their discography.
(From left to right, bottom to top) Holly Martin, Pollard Berrier, Maria Q, Danny Griffiths, Darius Keeler, Dave Pen)
III/ The Music
1. The First Album - Londinium (1996)
Two former DJs with a house and hip-hop background team up with an underground rapper and an ethereal singer with a jazz formation. The link between each member is London, hence the title which is the city’s ancient name, like another way to highlight how the band is going to dig into their past influences to create a sound born out of music history and their own creativity. When the first track is cleverly called Old Artist, the first lyrics ever on an Archive project are sung by Roya Arab, « Reflecting on what’s been / Though past will be future / When again yesterday has to be made » on All Time. In a dark trip-hop mood, Archive start by an album that both targets their preferred themes (balance of power in So Few Words, class war in Nothing Else) and the way they think their music. A brilliant start to introduce the band, with an album that, still today, remain one of the best underground trip-hop album of the nineties.
2. The Albums
25 (2019)
Three years after their last album The False Foundation, Maria Q, Holly Martin and the new singer Lisa Mottram come back to add seven songs to a compilation celebrating 25 years of music together. Even if every fan probably has a word to say about the tracklist (not seeing Headspace and Me and You for me for example), the succession of songs is perfect, with Erase, Remains of Nothing and Falling renewing their sound, ‘till the final three tracks, among the best they ever recorded, hits you like a hammer. Anguish. This is the word to keep in mind while listening to this three-track ending, starting with The Hell Scared Out Of Me, about Dave Pen’s wanted his anxieties to go out of his body, while Hyperreal focuses on the subconscious and Heart Beats is centered on a fight between life drive and death drive.
You All Look the Same to Me (2002)
Choosing one album by Archive is a very very hard thing to do because they are all so different, each of them containing unique musical propositions. But You All Look the Same To Me may be the album that created Archive’s aura, still feeding their inventiveness today. Their third album is a wild ride, at times very emotional on Again and Goodbye and minimalistic on Numb and Finding It So Hard. Both those songs are really interesting because they’re about moments of stillness, the first one about letting yourself drown in your mind, and the second one about incommunicability (one again, here lies a Pink Floyd influence), and the way they express those topics within the music is a beautiful thing to experience. Don’t misinterpret repetitiveness for a lack of artistry. Self-destruction, love, dependence, control, it’s all already there.
3. The Song - Heart Beats (2019)
Dark as hell, it starts with a fictional suicide and then spreads its wings, “asking yourself how you can speak, move, breathe, think, and feel when you feel nothing inside. But the heart beats on. You’re alive but not living. Quiet, quiet. You want to remain in the silent place. Hiding from anything that makes you human. From anything that makes you feel. Forever living in darkness.” When Archive released this album, I was lying in my bed, all lights turned off with my headphones on. I didn’t looked at the track duration before launching 25 and really wanted to hear another of their long song, always masterworks (Lights, Again, Controlling Crowds). The Hell Scared Out of Me ended and then I saw : 14 minutes and 46 seconds, what a bliss. And when you hear it, unveiling its complex and hypnotizing structure in the dark, the quote from Archive describing the song, sounds exactly right.
IV/ The Playlist