| Doors: 7 pm | Show: 8 pm | Tickets: 35.00 Euro + fees |

ARCHIVE is an extraordinary band of excellent musicianship and a wide range of musical styles and influences. While quite successful throughout Europe they are still no mainstream band, they carved their own niche, so to say. That alone makes them much likeable. ;)
The music of ARCHIVE spans Trip Hop, Electronica, Post Rock, Shoegaze and Progressive, a unique mixture that thrills (me) to the max. Once infected, their albums often run up and down the player. And, whenever it is possible, I try to catch them live and would drop everything to come running. Now, ARCHIVE celebrate their 25 anniversary and has released a massive retrospective collection simply called 25, featuring two CDs or four albums with tracks drawn from the band's career, including new and previously unreleased songs, including collaborations with Band Of Skulls and Steve Mason.
And of course ARCHIVE accompany this anniversary with an extended European tour. For four months they will be around and they started at the wonderful :: Colosseum Theater :: in Essen, Germany.

:: pics :: ARCHIVE ::

The Colosseum Theater was well attended but not sold out, what was kind of odd, as most of the shows of the tour are sold out. And I remember past shows around the area sold out too. Well, that’s the way it is. There was no support band. The one and only :: ARCHIVE :: pure and unfiltered for two hours. Yeah!
The stage was bathed in blue lights. On time at 8pm, the intro set in and the band members appeared on stage one after another, welcomed with enthusiastic applause by the audience. And then ARCHIVE kicked off powerfully with You Make Me Feel.
Although the Colosseum Theater is a wonderful location, one thing immediately turned out bad: the seats. Because, you could not dance! A downer that gnawed on the evening’s pleasure the whole show. Here at previous shows or at similar places I have seen fans jumping up no matter what and dance (or headband), tonight, everybody remained well-behaved and seated. But I have seen many who were sliding on the seats, wiggling heads, toes and shoulders ;) It is not the same, I know…
As the tour theme was clear we got a set of best-of tracks, all to find on the best-of collection except for Dangervisit, the last song before the encore.
The ARCHIVE collective consists of nine musicians on this tour. This was new to me, because the shows I attended so far happened without the female singers Maria Q and Holly Martin. Premiere to me tonight – I finally got the whole band to see playing live. The stage in the Colosseum is pretty big, so no problem for the musicians and the stage setting, though, the band stood much in the depth of the stage. A bit closer to the audience would not have done any harm ;)

The set was cleverly built and very dynamic. ARCHIVE started with faster and more energetic tracks, went to the quieter ones and lifted up the audience with snappy ones. Great thrill that left an impact. After enthusiastically moving on the seat, I burst into tears at the very emotional End Of Our Days and Collapse/Collide. The first one was solo performed by Holly, the second one by Maria Q. The whole concert was a roller coaster of emotions and feelings. Uplifting melodies were taken down by pure melancholy and dark lyrics just to gain momentum again by driving rhythms.
The show was accompanied by a beautiful light show that perfectly suited the single tracks or highlighted the musicians (just from a photographer’s view the lightshow sucked ;)). The sound was clear and differentiated, perhaps a little bit too loud.

With every new song the listener was drawn deeper and deeper into the ARCHIVE cosmos and was about to lose itself, to be completely absorbed by the music. It was magical and mesmerizing.
There were no announcements made. Just a “thank you” here and there. No need for it either. After almost two hours, the show came to its official end but ARCHIVE granted the crowd a two-song encore with Lights at first and then with the acoustic Again to ultimately close a fantastic and highly emotional concert evening. To me one of the top 3 concerts in 2019.

And, as if it was enough, I was granted a beautiful half-moon rising on my way back home. Deep and much decorative the moon hang on the horizon like a big cocktail lemon (or orange). Ah, that was beautiful. Really. What a night!

As I already mentioned, ARCHIVE tour across Europe for four months and they have just started their ride. On October 31 they will play in Cologne at E-Werk. So, if you missed them in Dortmund, do not miss them in Cologne! Or catch them anywhere close your town ;)

Band: Dave Pen (vox, git, drums), Darius Keeler (keys), Danny Griffiths (keys), Pollard Berrier (vox, git), Smiley (drums), Steve Davis (bass), Steve Harris (git), Maria Q (vox), Holly Martin (vox)

Setlist: You Make Me Feel, Fuck U, Pills, Bullets, Kings Of Speed, Kid Corner, Violently, System, Remains Of Nothing, Erase, Finding It So Hard, End Of Our Days (Holly), Collapse/Collide (Maria), Controlling Crowds, Dangervisit // Lights, Again

story & pics © Dajana & Dajana Winkel • Photography