Archive – The False Foundation

While it took about a year to warm up to it, it was worth it. This album is bizarre, but honestly just fun. It feels like the same tone that Dr. Strangelove has, just laughing at the end of the world. (Almost feels like a parody of Axiom) It isn't as clean as Controlling Crowds or Axiom, and it almost sound amateurish with some of the production decisions, but those decisions make me love the album even more.

Three albums in as many years, although common at one point, is almost unheard of at this point for a touring band - especially one who started their career with regular three year gaps. Given that most of the band's career highlights have come as a result of time away and shake-ups, it is perhaps a surprise that The False Foundation stands up very well.

Archive's tenth album is, perversely, one of their bleakest and yet also their most fun record. Fun isn't really a word regularly associated with Archive, a group who are often on the receiving end of comparisons to bands like Radiohead, and whose albums bear titles like Controlling Crowds and With Us Until You're Dead. On the surface, The False Foundation is no different, with its stark black and white artwork, dystopian imagery (the band are vague about who the titular false foundation are, but the similarity between the album's double-F logo and the emblem of the totalitarian government in V for Vendetta is almost certainly no coincidence) and titles like 'Driving in Nails' and 'The Weight of the World'. And yet strange glimmers of hope and even absurdity flicker through the gloom - and light is always stronger in contrast with darkness.

Singles 'Driving in Nails' and 'The False Foundation' find the band in an unusually stripped down format: neither feature live drums, and even the live bass and guitar are looped and processed. Without Hannah Martin or Maria Q providing vocals, the album features an all-male lineup Archive (for the first time since Noise in 2004), and even Jerome Devoise is missing as a co-producer. Keeler and Griffiths handle the sole production irably; in fact, this might be the most intricately produced Archive record to date, with sounds coming and going from the mix at strange, unexpected points: reverb tails end and synth lines arrive in the manner of filmic jump-cuts.

For every heavily electronic piece, there's a slower track led by Darius Keeler's piano. 'Blue Faces' and 'Bright Lights' are both beautiful examples. On the moody 'A Thousand Thoughts', Pollard Berrier continues the experiments with vocal harmonies found on Restriction, layering his voice countless times. Pen and Berrier make a rare appearance sharing vocals on the tense 'Splinters', with its layers and loops of words.

And yet for all these dark moments, what makes the album stand out goes back to that word 'fun' again. This is the first album that removes Archive from trip-hop entirely. Drum machines and cold synth sequences lead a number of the songs, and, as the video for 'Driving in Nails' suggests, there's a definite Kraftwerk sound to proceedings. In fact, for the first time in their career, Archive are straight-up danceable in places. Several of the jump-cuts are downright odd, taking the listener by surprise, and suggesting that the band are playing with expectations.

The album closes on probably the brightest sounding moments of the collective's career. 'Sell Out', with its wandering guitar, earnest vocals, and tambourine, is an early '70s hippie anthem with electronic production: one that closes by speeding up and adding bizarre laughter that leads directly into the oi-punk/synthpop mix of 'Stay Tribal'. Dave Pen half speaks, half sings the words with a knowing smirk, while Keeler and Griffiths have a lot of fun with the backing track, throwing in an electric guitar part for one bar, or a piano section for two notes (all musicians are credited regardless). Frankly, it's pretty hilarious. And that's nothing compared to closer 'The Weight of the World', which pits the album's bleakest lyrics against a synthpop beat, gospel-like harmonies from Pen and Berrier, a honky-tonk piano breakdown, some of the most absurd jump-cuts of the whole record, hand-claps, and the word 'horror' pitch-shifted and looped ad infinitum throughout. The whole thing is dripping with irony, and is funnier the closer you listen. The kick in the nuts is the reprise of the harrowing opening track right at the end.

A couple of the slower tracks aside, The False Foundation doesn't really sound like anything Archive have released before. In that sense, it's the first album since Controlling Crowds to be a genuine surprise, and although a fair amount of the fanbase have found the change in sound difficult, I personally welcome it as a necessary continuation of the group's experimentation and vastly varied output. In some senses, the smaller band, increased electronics and vocal harmonies were signposted on 2015's Restriction, and I'm genuinely very excited to find out if they continue along this path in the future.