Customer Reviews

You All Look the Same to Me

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow what a stunner! Archive aren't exactly your average household name even though this their 3rd release from what I'm finding out. But judging from what I'm hearing here i have majorly missed out on a great group.
"You all look the same to me" is simply a tremendous and very spacey album.
Opening track ""Again" sets the pace and the mood as it goes on for a lenghty 16 minutes and is possibly the best track I've heard that dares to go on for so long. A gorgeous and psychedelic melancholic song that doesn't lose its grip on you for a single second.
But the whole LP is marvelous. Archive have been compared to Pink Floyd but I think this was more out of the typical need people have to categorise music in comparable terms.
If there is anything that brings to mind Pink Floyd or groups from their era then it has to be the moody lyrics that often tackle alienation. But when it comes to the musical part Archive occupy a niche of their own.
Dreamy guitars mixed with ethereal electronics and a pace that shifts from faster to slow without spoiling the overall result. It's hard to talk about this album really. It's very emotional, very envolving, very multilayered.
Great singer as well. Wow.

Yes, I know I don't usually write about Electronica/Trip Hop/Prog Rock but can't you just picture me leaping into the air fist extended and doing cartwheels. Listening to the first song on this album Again, which is a monster beyond compare, my feet float twelve inches off the ground. Unfairly, the other songs, some of which are pretty good in their own right, pale by comparison.

Who Is Arhive?

The nucleus of Archive is Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths who seem to break up every couple of years and then reform with a different style. Maybe that's why they break up, differences in style. Well I hope they don't break up again since their style is now perfecto!

Darius and Danny started playing trip hop around 1994 with lady singer Roya Arab and rapper Roski John but they broke up in 1996 (what'd I tell ya) and reformed the following year with different personnel and recorded "Londinium". I haven't heard it but it's reputed to be a pretty good disc, though strictly trip hop. After another breakup our boys got back together with new members again and recorded their sophomore effort, "Take My Head". Again I haven't heard this but I hear they went Pop on this one getting some radio play and getting a hit single and also getting noticed. In 2002 they shifted style once more, to the chagrin of their existing fans, and released their third release, their tour de force (especially "Again") and their best album ever You All Look The Same To Me - they have one more entitled "Noise"

You All Look the Same To Me

You All Look The Same To Me is tough to categorize. It has elements of their previous work but it is clearly veering into a floydian style of ambient electronic, progressive rock. The music varies from slow to medium paced, from gentle to driving. from melancholic to emotive. Some songs such as "Numb" are pretty monotoned while others such as "Again", "Finding it so Hard" and "Meon" are varied in style, pace and content. There are interesting portions where instruments not normally associated with any of these genres are utilized such as Violin, viola, harmonica and trumpet. Archive have a capable singer, whose style reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins guitarist singer, Billy Coragan, is Craig Walker, who I might add is ably backed up by a couple lady singers.

Killer Songs

Truly a sixteen minute masterpiece, Again starts out innocent enough with a subtle repetitive acoustic guitar riff and keyboard backing Walker's melancholy vocal accusations:
"You're killing me again
Am I still in your head?
You used to light me up
Now you shut me down"
Walker's singing is never better than it is on this song. He starts out, as the song does, gentle almost delicate and as the song picks up steam through the middle so does Walker pick up emotion. At about the two minute mark the song gets temporarily ethereal with an echoing vox and harmonica and violin/viola, I don't know which. Then the pace picks up a little with a distorted guitar, drums and a stronger harmonica. There is a classic Floyd sound from here on out. At eight or so minutes the song really gets going and the singer Walker is practically crying, he's so emotive. Sound effects are replete and you're saying to yourself, please don't end and then at about the eleven minute mark the music stops and slowly starts up again ala "Welcome to the Machine". By now you are practically drained but you know when it's over you got to play it "Again" and then you figure out where they got the name, because you'll play it again and again and agai....................

After "Again" everything is a let down though "Numb" is a pretty good song, with a driving beat and the disharmonic guitar is back for an encore, though what few lyrics are evident on the song are fairly unintelligible.

"Seamless" is a Floydian style instrumental, short but good which leads into the fifteen minute semi-masterpiece, "Finding it so Hard". Now this is no "Again" but if there was no "Again" it would seem pretty good. As with "Again" there is nothing memorable about the heavy beat medium paced beginning but at about five minutes we get a little Floydianisk atmospheric mysticism. Near eight minutes the heavy beat is back but infinitely more interesting. The unrequited love theme of the album is repeated here with lyrics like:
" I'm finding it so hard
To make my life with you
I'm finding it so hard
To let myself be with you "

CONCLUSION

I'll admit there's a lot of Pink Floyd in this album but with Floyd failing to release any new material since 1994, what's wrong with that. Some have said YALTSTM sounds a little like Radiohead and Porcupine Tree as well. I agree with that and while we're at it let's add Anathema and Pain of Salvation into the mix but let's face it, aren't there Floyd influences in all those bands.

The first time I listened to "You all look the same to me" by ARCHIVE I was totally surprised since I was not expecting such quality music! I borrowed it from a friend who told me it was fantastic, but only when I listened to it did I realize how AMAZING it was. The first song "Again" is 16 min and 19 sec. long, but you just don't realize it, because you just get hypnotized by the great voice and the fabulous musical ambience. The rest of the album is just as amazing... The lyrics wash your soul and when the cd ends you just feel as if you had gone through a healthy therapy session. BUY IT NOW!!! And check their site. There you will be able to listen to all their other cds, which are great as well (www.archives-archive.co.uk).

The first time you listen to this album you have to just chill out and go through it from beginning to end. This cd is breath-takingly epic in it's depth and soundscapes. AGAIN is one of those songs that makes you feel so many things at once, it's like an amazing experience to just sit there and listen to the songs grandeur. It will lift you up and take you on a journey that you won't want to return from. The beats and vocals are all very haunting and dramatic and remind me a little of a reborn modern day Pink Floyd that is accompanied by orchestration and trip hop induced thumpings. If you are a lover of emotionally captivating, deep, stirring music than you HAVE to buy this cd! I bought it almost 2 years ago and still can't stop playing it! These are the kinds of songs that I would want my lifes soundtrack to follow. Archive is incredible. Hands down one of the best albums of the decade!

I've had this album for awhile now, and recently I've been finding myself listening to more britt post-rock stuff when I'm not in the studio. Archive's sound is a great combo of trip hop and Pink Floyd rock, "You All Look..." is one of those albums that you just need to hear to experience. Great vocals, production that holds itself right up against Brian Eno or Flood, and is overflowing with soul.... the element that seems to be lacking in many artists albums in the sea of new bands and producers today. If you like Elbow/The Doves or even Massive Attack, you'd enjoy this

it's easy to classified this album. 5 stars
when i put the cd in my hi-fi and i saw the time tracks, and i saw more then 16min for track number 1 "Again", i thought, how in the world i'll get enough patiente to hear this song 'till the end. In the end of this fantastic song, i put my eyes to the skyes a asked to myself "Why this song is so short??" And it's not the only one, the others sons are very good too. Just Buy This album

It's a journey you never made before.

If you listen to that album and you open enough for it,- you will be albe to understand music in a different light!!!

dude

Unreal. I got wind of these guys watching MuchMusic when the video for "Again" aired, and I was smitten.

When I bought the album I was even more giddy when I discovered the full version of "Again" is over 15 minutes long but feels like 30 seconds. And the rest of the album just flows from there.

It's so unorthodox. There's another track that's over 16 minutes, some near 10 minutes, and then others that barely break the one-minute mark. But ultimately, it just glides from beginning to end.

I'm sure it's been said before, but the best description I can make of it is this: a mix between Pink Floyd and Radiohead with an entirely new dimension not reminiscient of either one.

If you like Britney, don't buy this album. If you like real music, buy this album.

5 stars to Archive as they make awsome music
1 star to Amazon as they don't sell their newest album "Noise" yet and I cannot do a review a brilliant album.

You look all the same to me has infinite sadness through that 16 minutes tack "Again". Stunning! They know how to built some mood. He continued the style on "Meon". "Numb" is native american driven and not much lyrics in there.

A wonderful band.

When I saw that Archive had released a new album (only their third since 1996), I was ecstatic. Londinium is a unique album in my collection: idiosyncratic, moody, coherent, and a haunting reminder of the trip-hop genre's roots.

Perhaps I need to let this one grow on me, but the first question that struck me was, "What happened to the beautiful atmnospheric female vocals and male spoken lyrics?" On this album they've been replaced with angsty-though-subdued psychadelic rock style vocals, very reminiscent of Roger Waters in Pink Floyd (it amused me that nearly every other reviewer picked up on the same comparison). The vocals plead and moan, but don't convince, an sometimes irritate.

Why second question was, "What happened to the in-your-gut drumlines and soaring analog leads?" Judging by this album, that style is a thing of the past as well, replaced with acoustic and electric guitars, harmonicas, and organs. Only "Fool" has any remnants of the old instrumentation, and it only teases.

Perhaps my opinion would have been different if this were my first exposure to Archive, but I miss the old band. There was nothing else like them, whereas this new re-invention can be compared to far too many other bands, who have been doing this style a lot longer and a lot better.