Seefeel took shape when Sarah Peacock put an ad in the music press, looking for a guitarist into My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. Mark Clifford replied, but rather than offering his services, he invited Peacock to join his band. The group’s line-up at the time featured Justin Fletcher, Daren Seymour and Mark Van Hoen. 

Despite their cited shared musical influences, Seefeel weren’t really interested in distortion, more simply doing something different and working outside the “rock” norm. To this end they fed their drums, guitars and vocals through delay units and harmoniser pedals. Seefeel sent demos to BBC Radio DJ John Peel, who booked them for a session, the broadcast of which got them signed to indie label, Too Pure. They released a couple of EPs, one of which was remixed by Aphex Twin, who was another big fan of the band (1). 

Seefeel’s sound was increasingly impacted by contemporary dance music culture, and they, in particular, mentioned being inspired by all-night “ambient house” events held by The Orb (2). The band then discovered Cubase, which added a whole other level of complexity to their music, and contributed in no small measure to the uniqueness of their debut long-player, Quique. Clifford has confessed that he got obsessed with the production process, spending days and nights creating and layering tiny loops: “Take 2 seconds of guitar and chop it into 1000 pieces, loop it, string it out for 10 minutes, layer it, and so on.” (3)

Along with shredding and reassembling their instruments, the group also did away with conventional song structure. The tracks on the album have no discernible beginning, middle or end. They themselves are like loops and the entire set, again, is a cyclical listening experience (4). Skipping through pieces, on the surface they may appear to remain static. However, letting each number, and the long-player do its thing, reveals the recordings to be constantly changing, hugely engaging, involving, trippy, transcendent even. On the opening Climatic Phase No. 3, guitar and synth-generated frequencies start off spinning in their own separate orbits, but these eventually coalesce, pick up pace and together hurtle toward an ecstatic rush. 

The track were all clearly influenced by the techno and trance of the time. Representing hypnotic, ever evolving grooves, that once they establish themselves, are slowly undercut by epic, euphoric, arms-in-the-air, melodic elements. Seymour’s bold bass-lines ground everything, reflecting the hours Seefeel spent with drummer Fletcher’s roots reggae collection (5). Peacock’s man / machine-handled harmonies are the humanising cherry on top. 

Polyfusion is slower, darker. A rattling industrial dub whose icy guitar, is a little bit gothic, sending out metallic siren / shaman-like wails and arcs. A stoned, head nodding sonic narcotic where reference points are A.R. Kane, Dele Fadele’s Welfare Heroine and Martin Hannett’s work with Basement 5. Industrious packs a Liquid Liquid / Cavern-like B-line and ethereal echoes of Aphex Twin’s X-Tal. Imperial is Steve Reich’s classical minimalism and electric counterpoint via Manuel Gottsching and Detroit techno, E2-E4 and Derrick May’s remix of Sueno Latino. Beatless, blissed-out, densely detailed dancing vapour. Locked in rising and falling waves. Plainsong races on rockier drums. With instruments squeezed into reed-like repeats and riffing in circles around a mutated motorik rhythm. Lyrically it’s more developed, less deconstructed, and represents a stepping stone between where Seefeel were going and where they had come from. It sounds just like Spacemen 3, MBV, Slowdive, Lush… shoegaze subjected to a radical electronica overhaul.  

Charlotte’s Mouth is dubby, like The Cure’s Lullaby lost in an echo chamber (6). Its sub-bass void illuminated by ragged ringing guitar and a spectral angelic snippets. Through You sets a sort of Medieval melody to trickling, treated percussion and the muffled kick of rave taking place on the horizon. Filter Dub brings the bass even more to the fore, with Seymour paying homage to Jah Wobble. The 6-strings “Kevin Shields in slo-mo” see-sawing, smashed snares keeping them in check, on what is the LP’s most mediative moment. Signals closes. A dense textured cloud, a warm woozy wash, a symphony manufactured from digital debris, that captures that foggy feeling of the morning after the party before, bending back into shape after raving on a mind full of E. This all made for an incredible debut. 

Quique was rightly championed by the brilliant / celebrated  journalist Simon Reynolds, who featured Seefeel in one of two now famous articles written for The Wire and Melody Maker in late 1994, where he coined the term “post-rock”. Following the album’s success, Seefeel signed to Warp – where they became the first band on the label to use guitars. This opened new doors for the imprint, and also found Seefeel sharing the bill with acts like Autechre and µ-Ziq (7). 

The incredible Quique and its irresistible expanded Redux can be ordered directly from Seefeel.

NOTES

(1) Richard James did these remixes for free, in return for Seefeel tracks for his label, Rephlex. He eventually, in 1996, got to release the 6-track mini-LP (Ch-Vox).

(2) Around the time of Quique, the band tired of touring. It must have proved impossible to reproduce the sound of the album live, plus they had no desire to turn out the same performance night after night. They were too interested in doing something new. In interviews they talked about hosting events similar to those held by The Orb, rather than playing straight forward gigs. That said there is an incredible clip of the band performing during the ill-feted “Britronica” tour of Russia.

(3) This is from Simon Reynolds seminal Wire post-rock piece. Interviewed by Jeanette Leech, Clifford revealed that there were 30 versions of Plainsong.

(4) Quique is one of the few LPs that I’ve listened to, from start to finish, over and over.  

(5) It was those bass-lines that first got me hooked, and keep me hooked.

(6) Charlotte’s Mouth actually sounds how I’d imagine Jay Glass Dubs remixing The Cure to sound, and must surely have been an influence on later “post-rock” acts such as Michigan`s Transient Waves.

(7) Also alongside Autechre, Seefeel’s track Spangle appeared on Volume 2 of Warp’s “IDM” defining Artificial Intelligence comps.