There’s always been a slightly ironic angle to Seefeel’s name, in part because the music they make is almost fog-like, a haze of effects, distortion and processing. Emerging in the early nineties when fusing the guitar rush of shoegaze with ambient drones was something regarded with suspicion by purists of either genre, their debut album Quique and inclusion on Warp’s Artificial Intelligence II compilation elevated them to a peer group which included the likes of Aphex Twin.
It’s been eleven years since their self titled last album, although according to founder Mark Clifford the gap wasn’t a hiatus as such, more of a struggle to collate their vast output into a cohesive form. Clifford has also been clear about the relatively direct nature of the half a dozen tracks here, stating simply “Warp don’t like noodles”.
Even so it’s difficult to align any of them to a particular era, although some sound early enough to have been Quique out takes, or sprung from the Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II. The highlight though is Antiskeptic, on which a degraded, industrial low end is separated from keening bell higher register tones, a warning and an invitation wrapped into one. Seefeel’s ambiguous relationship with their name should be the last thing anyone should care about if their future output is to be this good.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 