#020 – Archaïa

#020 – Archaïa

Album: Archaïa (1977)

Archaïa on Prog Archives

This album, rather unfairly lumped into the semi-fictional genre of zeuhl*, is a delightfully eerie affair. Lacking a dedicated drummer, the music instantly has a looser feel to it than the regimental beats normally associated with zeuhl. Pulsating bass, shrill B-movie synths, psyched-out guitar and ghostly chanting form the core of this album, embellished with a few touches of percussion here and there. In short, this isn’t just zeuhl, this is psychedelic zeuhl – as trippy as Gong, as dark and forboding as Guapo. The chord progressions are straight out of the Magma songbook, instantly evoking a sense of oncoming doom and dread which makes me feel genuinely uneasy despite the obvious absurdity and campness of it all.

Really, all this talk of a drummerless psychedelic-prog-zeuhl workout is either going to have you salivating onto your keyboard or recoiling in horror, and there’s nothing more I could say to alter that.

Freak Factor: 7/10

Replayability: 8/10

Overall score: 8/10

*I say unfairly as every band which unwittingly winds up being classified as such instantly necessitates comparisons to the mighty zeuhl progenitors themselves, Magma. I tried to limit myself to just a couple, but their influence is pretty obvious on this album, even if the differences do outweigh the similarities.