Archive

Biography

Over the course of three albums, this UK band morphed from downbeat hip-hop miserablists to overwrought art-rockers overtly inspired by Pink Floyd and Talk Talk. Archive had formed around the core of Danny Griffiths and Darius Keeler, recruiting vocalists Rosco John and Roya Arab (sister of Leila). Although Archive’s first album, 1997’s Londinium, geographically located the band in the UK’s capital, their juxtaposition of hip-hop and near baroque production seemed to locate them in a lineage of Bristol-based acts such as Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky. Londinium was cool, stylish and intriguing. However, the band began to fragment even prior to the album’s release, and they re-formed with new vocalist Suzanne Wooder to record Take My Head, an album that drew on both rock and dance culture to produce a melodramatic hybrid not dissimilar to that subsequently produced by Garbage and Death In Vegas. However, although it seemed to include...

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