Opening Up: Archive

With nine long-players to their name, Archive have seen several changes to their original style and line up over the course of their ten year career. Starting out as a project that morphed trip-hop with rap and alternative rock, the group have slowly moved away from the safety of the studio and are now renowned for their live electro rock performances across France, Germany and much of Europe. Not bad going for a band who have split up more times than they care to remember, but there is one, nagging problem for the London based collective as Darius Keeler eloquently explains: “No one in the UK knows who the **** we are!”

Quite. Gigwise caught up with the band before their recent show at the Scala, sell out it might have been but the English to foreign language ratio spoken here tonight is almost non existent. So just how does a band with a huge, loyal European fanbase appear to be invisible in their own country? Darius elaborates:  “The reason we’ve had so much inactivity in the UK is because we had two big record deals when we were kids. We ****ed them right up and the industry wouldn’t touch us. We owe Sony £500,000 and we owe Island god knows how much. We finished the first album and broke up and the same happened with the second album so there was no way we were gonna get a deal in the UK, not a chance.”

Sounds straightforward enough, but it begs the question, how have Archive achieved such great success just a stones throw away across the water? Talkative and enthusiastic as always Darius fills us in: “The only reason it works in Europe is for some reason, some important journalist in France got hold of ‘Londinium’ (Archive’s debut album) and went ****ing mental for it and before we knew it we’d sold 20,000 records.”

If you’ve seen Archive live or have heard any of their albums, you’ll know what they’re all about; in a nutshell, big, sonic and balls out. But their current sound is a far cry from the trip-hop, rap and alternative rock of ten years ago. Darius explains: “Me and Dan (Griffiths) started off as a studio band, Genaside II” (one of the first recognisable drum and bass acts in the UK) “and we wrote a track called ‘Nara Mine’. Liam from the Prodigy said that was the tune that influenced what the Prodigy are, but it was all studio based.”

Despite the acclaim that ‘Narra Mine’ received, the pair wanted more: “We started slowing the beats down because we got bored with that kind of tempo and then we got bored of just using keyboards so we introduced guitars and live drums and that’s how it evolved. Before we knew it we had a guitarist, a bass player and a drummer. Electronic music is amazing but if you do it for too many years without a live feeling, you can go out of your ****ing mind.”