Send "Seefeel " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Drownedinsound |
 Perceived as something of a year zero in certain UK music circles, 1993 heralded a glut of landmark records predetermining the oncoming rush of Britpop. Suede's eponymous debut, Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish and PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me all landed on an unsuspecting public tired of grunge and its endless stream of Nirvana copyists. Two other groundbreaking albums also appeared that summer. Stereolab's Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements announced the arrival of post-rock with an avant garde European twist, while London four-piece Seefeel issued their first long player, Quique, a curious offering that mixed the drawn-out reverb fantasies of a more refined My Bloody Valentine with the industrialised minimalist techno meanderings of LFO and Nightmares On Wax. Although released on rising independent Too Pure, home to fellow oddities Moonshake, Th' Faith Healers and the aforementioned Ms Harvey among others, it came as no real surprise when Seefeel eventually ended up on Warp Records. Their music causing various outbreaks of puzzled looks and head scratching, particularly as many of the beat-ordained techno genres it would fall into later hadn't been created back then. While comparisons to the Cocteau Twins saw them adopted by the floppy fringe brigade - no doubt aided by Sarah Peacock's wordless vocals - it would be fair to say they made a more lasting impression upon a wave of electronic inspired acts still waiting to burst on the scene. For all the brilliant records mustered between the likes of Ulrich Schnauss, Boards Of Canada, M83 and current DiS faves Emeralds, it wouldn't be too wide of the mark to suggest their use of layered textures to create ambient dreampop may not have come to fruition without Seefeel paving the way initially. But of course, all that is in the past and although Seefeel's legacy can never be diminished, their visionary nature is what made them such an enigmatic proposition in the first place. Having taken a self-imposed hiatus for fourteen years, their return to the live arena last year culminating in the excellent Faults EP, which only whetted the appetite further for their first long player in a decade-and-a-half....full text |
| Contactmusic |
| Like Portishead before them Seefeel have returned with an album of surprising velocity and power, yet whilst Portishead found new life from decade/s old influences in the shoegaze and krautrock brackets and channelled it all into the most vital work of their career Seefeel have almost caved in on themselves, forsaking for the most part the intricacies and ocean-deep layers that bridged shoegaze and electronica to foreshadow a post-rock sound that was very rarely bettered by successors. What remains is certainly 'driving' but for the most part the album is firmly stuck on auto-pilot. Riding on a tempo that feels at least 30bpm to light for such pounding snare attacks, 'Rip-Run' and 'Dead Guitars' drag on far past the point of repetition as synths, samples and vocals float by listlessly. Every second feels like a slowed-down and faded-out outro to a song you wish you could rewind to find. Closer 'Sway' offers more of interest, at times sounding eerily close to Von-era Sigúr Rós, but even here each idea long outstays its welcome....full text |
| Musicomh |
| With driving dance-floor music at an inconceivable height of popularity, it's sometimes hard to remember that there remains a scene dedicated to using electronic instruments for experimental advances rather than populist euphoria. Seefeel have been in that scene since the mid-'90s, one of the foot soldiers of Warp's historic monopoly of thought-provoking electro-ambient. Their latest self-titled effort is the first LP we've seen from the band in nearly 15 years, as such it sounds intrinsically relatable to the abstract, and oft-eccentric sensibilities that defined the last decade's fractured take on dance music- sitting comfortably with its brandished Warp logo. As arguably one of Warp's lesser artists, Seefeel never had a specific sound, but this record has them reasserting the general aesthetics of the label's trademarked unity. It emerges like a fully-formed piece, awakening its most rhythmic elements towards the end of the listen, growing deeper and mixable as the running time drags on. In fact the first five tracks seem like a build-up to the nocturnal forlornness of Rip-Run, a ghostly seven-minute centerpiece of dampened bass-punches and eerily inhuman whistles. The noise loop that comes before it, Gzaug, props the towering composition up nicely, accentuating its scale and purpose. Earlier, the woozy static splashes of Dead Guitars sets a tone of stark alienation, and creates the slow-motion tempo that the rest of the album works in. After Rip-Run comes Making, easily the album's most mixable and connected track, the dubstep-lite warble joined with a just-out-of-range whisper from a spectre of a female voice - it's the only time on the album a human of such indisputable emotion makes an appearance; unlike the uncannily shiny sing-song of earlier track Faults. Eventually that gives way to the closing cornerstone Sway; at nine minutes it's Seefeel's longest track. It's also the first time the band allow a few rays of sunlight to penetrate the dark, anti-social mix. Legendary experimentalists have always waited to the end of a work for solace, and Seefeel reciprocate studiously....full text |
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