Archive One – Dave Clarke – Released February 12th, 1996, Bush / Deconstruction Records.
Archive One is the debut album from UK techno superstar Dave Clarke.
Essentially, it’s a compilation of tracks from his three Red EPs, plus the Southside release, with additional tracks of various genres thrown in to help add more variety to the proceedings.
In other words, it’s half floor fillers, half album fillers and we tend to forget the latter because the former includes some of the finest techno tracks ever recorded.
Full disclosure, I’m writing this in a rush to coincide with the album’s digital release. I saw a post about it from the corner of my eye and realised it’s the perfect opportunity for me to share my love for this album.
And since it’s also Valentine’s day on Wednesday, I’ll share even more love with a little poem.
Roses are Red,
This album is too
I got it on vinyl
So haha
Fuck you! 😁
Simply Red
Ok, so let’s just get this out of the way first, eh?
I bought this album for one reason only – Wisdom To The Wise – more commonly referred to as Red 2.
It is, hands down, the greatest techno track of all time.
There, I said it.
Nothing in the 30 years since that track’s release has ever excited me quite as much and likely nothing ever will.
The rest of Archive One’s runtime could have consisted of a KPMG tax seminar playing over chopped up baboon flatulence beats with nails on a chalkboard scratching and extended bagpipe solos and I’d still rank it as one of the greatest electronic albums ever made.
The fact that it had all three Reds on it – bargain of the century.
Even the box from this LP was special, it had an orange corrugated cardboard pull-tab thing which you pulled off to open the album.
It was a cool gimmick from an aesthetic point of view though 28 years later my copy looks quite frayed compared to some other albums.
It’s not as worn as the actual tracks though. This album was part of the original belt drives era collection, along with albums like Carl Cox F.A.C.T., tunes that I absolutely hammered to death while first learning to beat mix.
Putting Red 2 on the turntables for the first time, scratching those distinctive kicks while I matched up the beat – feeling the adrenaline rise as I mixed in in for the first time – don’t think I’ll ever feel such an overwhelming sense of power again.
I imagine it’s how rednecks in America feel when they buy automatic weapons.
As a pimply teen with shitty belt drives suddenly being able to mix Red 2 into Maurizio, having such awesome firepower at my fingertips and knowing I still got another two Reds in the clip.
I was invincible.
Reopening The Archives
Archive One starts with a piece called Rhapsody In Red, a brooding cinematic piece which, back in 1996, sounded quite epic but listening back now after so many years reminds me more of a long expositional cutscene where the Final Fantasy villain explains his evil plan.
I mean musically yeah, it’s fine, but it only really serves to demonstrate how far orchestral sound design has come a long way since then.
So let’s move on to the real reason we’re here – the techno…
Protective Custody (aka Red 1) is one of the all-time techno bangers and one of the first tracks to lure me away from hardcore in favour purer, more minimalist techno sounds.
It’s also a perfect example of how Dave Clarke raised the bar in terms of production.
Listen back to stuff from the same time period, even from masters like Jeff Mills or Basic Channel, and you can hear those rough edges. But with Dave Clarke’s sleek, speedster productions the rivets are completely flush.
Every kick EQd to perfection, every clap and high hat calculated down to the last micrometre, every echo and reverb tail in its right place.
This and his 313 remix of of Aphrohead’s In The Dark We Live, which both have that similar backwards rushing sound, were my first introduction to Dave Clarke and they both helped train my ear to appreciate minimalist drum patterns.
As with many of his contemporaries, Dave Clarke started off mixing hiphop before eventually graduating to techno. Hence the reason that, unlike many newer DJs, the man’s got proper Detroit-level turntable skills.
No-One’s Driving sees Dave returning to his hiphop roots for a bit with a strutting big beat banger called No-One’s Driving, featuring a sample from the Paris track, The Devil Made Me Do It.
Track four is called The Woki. Not sure what a Woki is, is it like a Wookie? Maybe a woke Wookie? Like the kind Darth DeSantis is always moaning about?
Wait what was I talking about? Ah yes, The Woki.
I like this one, reminds me of very early (pre-Bytes) Black Dog, especially the bassline and it gives the Baron a chance to chop up some breaks for a change.
Southside, from what I gather, is Dave Clarke’s tribute to Chicago.
Well I presume so anyway as it has more of a jackin’ house style this one and the EP has a remix by DJ Sneak on the flip, who’s as Chi Town as it gets.
The percussion is driving but there’s also plenty of bounce, and it somehow manages to incorporate French-style filter disco sounds while maintaining that have that signature metallic 90s Dave Clarke aesthetic.
This one’s another classic.
And so we get Wisdom To The Wise, also known as Red 2 – hands down my absolute favourite techno track of all time.
Red 2 borrows elements of Detroit minimalism and German dub techno and fuses them into a mighty alloy in the infernal fires of the Baron’s forge.
Everything about this track is perfection; the driving kick, artfully sculpted to sit just right within the mix, those scattershot claps, the gradually building filtered hook, the sense of urgency created by the cymbal pattern, how every single percussive element interacts with the others to create new kinetic ripples.
And all the while that sound… growing in intensity, swelling up within your eardrums, mutating and expanding, the beat driving your ever forward…
Listening to this track as intended, on a massive club sound system, is the ultimate techno thrill ride.
Like surfing a tsunami of molten steel in red asbestos Speedos as the scalding air whips by scorching your hair and wild sparks crackle at your feet.
DJs are always using this emoji, but this track fully earns it – 🔥.
More bouncy minimal fun with Tale Of Two Cities, not much more to say about it than that.
There’s still a whole rant about that “minimal techno” scene that was big like a decade or so ago now that’s still lurking at the back of my brain but I’m hoping if I supress it for another year it might finally fizzle out.
Suffice to say, when ravers above a certain age refer to “minimal techno” we mean stuff exactly like this.
Next up is Storm, a track which appeared on the flipside of Red 3. There were two versions of it, the version included on the album is the vocal version.
It’s yet another dancefloor inferno with that trademark reverse-sucking sound at the core.
The vocals use a pitch shifter, shifted down to create what we used to call a Darth Vader effect.
I used to know where the lyrics came from, I vaguely recall reading about it somewhere, but they’re not mentioned on the album cover, so I dunno.
Pretty sure it’s from some epic poem from yee olden times but I’m more a scholar of yee olden skool.
The only reason I’m mentioning this is because I just wasted five minutes of my life riffling through my records to find my copy of Archive One before squinting at the cover (why such a tiny font Dave?) trying to find out for yee – if that’s not dedication I dunno what is.
Miles Away stands out tonally with the rest of the album. The jazzy keys on this makes the track decidedly more blue in tone than red, while the synths evoke more of a Detroit futurist vibe.
I’d actually forgotten about this one actually. Listening back to again I’m surprised at how well it holds up and how much I like it.
Just not sure it belongs on this album, even though this album is literally meant to be an archive of old material and this track feels like an early experiment, which is probably part of the reason why I dismissed it.
But the main reason is because, in my OCD brain, this track it didn’t fit because it wasn’t Red enough.
Whereas Thunder… well, that’s about as Red as it fucking gets mate.
One bar is all you need to know that it absolutely, definitely, without the slightest sliver of a shadow of a doubt belongs on an album with a lurid fire engine red cover that hurts your eyes when you try to read it.
Thunder is the culmination of the Red tracks and is often also referred to as Red 3, the hardest of all the Reds.
Once again, it’s a masterclass in building tension through minimalist percussion programming and deft application of effects.
Though in this case the use of distortion is FAR more pronounced while the central melody loop (for lack of a better phrase) exists to drive the track forward while also drawing attention to the relentless rhythmic shifts that occur throughout.
Again, no surprises for guessing this is one of my all-time techno tracks, a dancefloor weapon so potent it should have its own toothless UN watchdog flailing about while it proliferates globally.
Thunder is one of those tracks that builds so much momentum I wish it could go on forever, alas the track always cuts very abruptly, I felt, stopping dead in its tracks, with one last distorted tom added as The Baron’s final fuck you – that’s it, no more Thunder for you!
And then, to close the album, and with another huge tonal shift, we get Splendour, which again is another one of those tracks that’s better than I remember.
I also vaguely recall reading about this track having some sort of significance to the Baron when he recorded it (though I forget what exactly, loss of a family member I think) and how he wanted to end the album on a sombre tone and that’s fine, I can understand that.
And again, I can’t fault it musically, it’s a nice blunted triphop tune you can nod along to, but I’d still happily jettison it from existence in a microsecond in favour of a potential Red 4.
The Red Baron
Some DJs are crowd-pleasers, they only give the people what they want and often come off as shallow.
Other DJs are the opposite, they only play what they want, and often come across as anal and pretentious.
The best DJs are those who strike the balance, meeting people’s expectations while at the same time challenging them with music they weren’t expecting to hear.
They’re the ones who tend to last longest in the game and gain reputations as tastemakers and elder statesmen (or women) of the scene.
And that’s the space The Baron occupies.
As DJs go, Dave Clarke’s one of the best of the best – raw turntable skills, selection skills, production skills – he’s a techno top trump card who scores 90% or more in every category.
And that’s why I want to give every track on this album its due. It may not be the most cohesive album out there, but I admire the intent.
It’s an artist using a platform to say, yeah, you know me for these timeless techno scorchers, and they’re all here for you to enjoy, but there’s other aspects to my personality I’d like to share with you too.
And I’m so glad he did. To be clear, I like all the tracks on this album, it’s just that my love for the three Reds burns so bright and the flames are so all-consuming, the rest of this album never stood a chance.
At any rate, while squinting at the tiny black on red font (no seriously Dave, why?) trying to find where the lyrics from Storm came from I instead found the following on the inside cover which I’m going to share with you now as it’s the perfect pearl wisdom for the wise to finish on:
If you’re not on the list you’re either meant to be or not meant to be. (your conscience will tell you…)