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Rating: If there is a group snubbed and underestimated by music critics, I truly believe it is the Londoners Archive. Here we are with their debut, dated 1996.
At the time, very few, really very few, noticed it.
It was the year of the Eels' Beautiful Freak, Pearl Jam's No Code, Nick Cave's Murder Ballads, and Beck's Odelay, just to mention some of the gems of '96. But there was no trace of Archive. And even in the years to come, despite releasing three more very respectable works (a bit less for Noise) over the long haul, we neither read nor saw almost anything.
So?
So I'll tell you. This is an immense album.
Deconstructed trip-hop. Rap inserts and sampled rhythms from the first to the last track, not a weak moment. Arguing that the rap parts might seem to slightly weigh down the work, leaves aside the importance of having given a break to a genre that was dozing off on the beat-melody binary.
I can assure you, however, that from the school of the great Grandmaster Flash, only a small echo is heard. Where the lyrics were dominant, here the Bristol doctrine clearly brands an album of unmistakable trip-hop origin (if you like, you could call it trip-hip-hop).
Nevertheless, there are more refined moments where the beat gently settles to soften the inevitable female vocals, Headspace above all.
Nocturnal music on technological beats and seductive voices taking the lead. Melody at the service of technology and vice versa.
Before them, there were Massive Attack and Portishead, after them came many imitators to plunder the genre, emptying it of meaning and making it good only for a beach barbecue. Chill-out for summer parties.
Among the most credible witnesses, I feel like giving a nod to Morcheeba, Mandalay, and Zero 7.
Buy this album, listen to it a thousand times then break it and go buy it again, listen to it another thousand times then break it and go buy it again, listen to it another thousand times...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 So Few Words (06:13)
So few words
So few words
We are movin' round to the hour
Force from the power
Thunder reigns down in a mass mind shower
Levellin' vibes unravellin' scribes
Take a venomous sting that's unsettlin'
But consequences awaits me around the corner
Reminiscent of my twistin' fate
All down to the fact it's a hard life
Travel on with the sense of a telling adventure
So as I wait for the opportune time to create
Soul energy that will then enable me to realise
Analyse all aspect of man-made decision
The vision the many ways
Wrong turn right, right turn... left
Ain't no way back straight ahead along track
Counteract react higher pace embrace
Expression when written on the face
Ya babblin' on flip automatic overide
So when pride gets swallowed
Check the events that follow
Interconnection bafflin' coincidence
All going hand in hand
They demand supply I deliver my peace
In what can be known as my only release
In the bellyfull beast tearin' up
And it's a cryin' shame it remains the same
Turn the next page over
So few words
So few words
Then on straight down
Thru the valley I roam
Lay claim my terrain thru my artery vein
But first intuition state my incondition is the reason
why you'll never get my submission
True as I'm present in time
I'm headlin' for the future
Movin' with a haste from time to waste
Break loose from a goose chase
What I do I take feathers and fly in spiritual sky
Return to ground zero zero
Now for the intrepid hero
Non-sense there will be no
I overrun cos unless I'm in a situation
I can learn a lesson in
one specimen away say a line refine
Humanity race ever being like one of a kind
Now we can never rewind so press
Forward to the end
With the passionate fruit from mother nature
So few words
So few words
06 Londinium (05:19)
Energy from every pore
Make what you will
Are you with or without?
The force cannot be blamed
Just the hunger or greed
Supplying the ugly drive
Diirty water no profit to supply
That round travelled far too long
In every direction you turn touch fire and you burn
Earn self recognition over all the preoccupying non-sense
I plead my inner sense savour this aroma of a new experience
High intelligence bound for the underground we burrow deep down
I originate like the world individual visual visionary I vary
And all others see my eye view so multiply through the big bad city
With a human emotion running wild not fit for the child of all ages
Accelerate speed of life moving closer to the centre enter at ya own
If ya will still the hustling bustling busy bee hive is alive
And kicking I'm picking the moment I gotta get away from this
Monotonous call the capital "L" loving every minute that I'm in it.
10 Parvaneh (Butterfly) (03:50)
I lie on my blue sheet so blue
Wait for sunrise and wait it brings
Wait for tomorrows I look to find
So tired sleep rest in peace
Let the wind fulfil your dreams
Let the sea heal your wounds
Tell the trees secrets so deep
In a kaftan of leaves I float
Sunrise bought me the peace I sought
I fly with no form to tie me down
I'm free to live, to live
To let the wind heal my wounds
To let the sea fulfil my dreams
And heart the trees secrets so deep
Don't let them tie you down
Fly where you please
13 Last Five (05:49)
Hell was a place I knew a long time ago
Everything was dark, there were mazes all around
Here is where I am, here is were I was
Here is were I don't want to be
Hell was a place I found by mistake
A gardens secret yet inviting door
Leading to a place
I'm trying hard to let go
From the downside to the upside
From the inside to the outside
There I'll be making my vocabulary overstand this
Ain't no mountain high enough, valley low enough
I will cross over the wake and take it all
Inside stride seven cracks in the walls of ya concrete
Roots to mother nature found the foundation
Seperating us with characterisation
Sensation in my body feel life never tires
And the ways of the world inspire
Myself an entire being is fact
Ancient artifact shows a generation, try and understand
And a man-made decision in division all men
Then again when or why must eye reign speech
Everyone and each must reach for the step they
Wanna climb to there is always time to
Lift an uplift with the gift we are all blessed
Lesson and test much more and no less.
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