Summary
An important thread for ambient music was started in Britain when the post-shoegazing psychedelic groups began playing music anchored to guitar drones.
Seefeel pioneered the idea on Quique (1993) and Succour (1994). The combination of Sarah Peacock's stunned vocals, Mark Clifford's minimalist guitars, Justin Fletcher's proto-rhythms and Darren Seymour's dub bass lines dissolved the music of My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 in nebulae of abstract sound.
Full bio
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Seefeel were among the first bands to conceive of "avant-garde guitar music" and anticipated the fusion of rock and ambient music that would become one of the most important musical phenomena of the 1990s. They were, in a way, the more accessible counterpart to the challenging meditations of ensembles like the Maeror Tri.
Formed in London, Seefeel debuted with the EP More Like Space (Too Pure, 1993) and an expansive sound, built on the breathless murmurs of Sarah Peacock, the rough spatial vibrations of Mark Clifford's guitars, Justin Fletcher's soft programmed rhythms, and Darren Seymour's dub bass.
The long trance of the title track (nine minutes) recalls raga and minimalist avant-garde. The tongue-twister of Time To Find Me floats in clouds of crystalline reverb and female murmurs.
Seefeel deliver ambient music with rock-and-roll practices (the band, the singer, the guitars, the EPs). They succeed by highlighting the similarities between the genre invented by Brian Eno and the ultra-ethereal sounds of bands like Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. The EP Plainsong recovers part of rocks rhythm and melodicism. The title track moves with a convulsive disco beat, and Moodswing seems to sample atmospheric jazz-rock. But the long stillness of Minky Starshine dominates the record, imposing ten minutes of mystical contemplation and subtle foreground cacophonies. The EP Pure Impure contains remixes and some tracks from the previous EP. Polyfusia (Too Pure, 1994) is an anthology of these EPs.
Expanding on these ideas, Quique (Too Pure, 1993 Redux, 2008) gives precedence to sound over song. Loops of guitar dominate the compositions, repeated until they form a harmony of their own. Vocals and the rhythm section are merely appendages to this sonic metabolism. There is still emotion in the intricate, dizzying minimalism of Climatic Phase 3, which has mystical surges worthy of Terry Riley, and in the metronomic flamenco of Industrious. But Polyfusion is merely a monotonous exercise in repeating the same sonic and vocal fragments over a tribal rhythmsomething the avant-garde was doing thirty years earlier. At least Imperial layers an impressive quantity of drones, managing to hypnotize purely through the intensity of noise. Rhythm and vocals return forcefully on the single Plainsong, which could be seen as the minimalist version of techno. The project also assimilates the obsessive dub rumble in the tracks Charlotte's Mouth and Filter Dub. Only the subtle impressionism of Signals manages to inject a hint of poetry into these rigid structures. The album shows some fatigue because, over its length, the band is forced to stretch ideas far beyond their actual scope.
The EP Starethrough (Warp, 1994) contains the melancholic Spangle, a song far more captivating than the experimental tracks on the album.
Seefeel, on the other hand, move in the opposite direction on Succour (Warp, 1994). Once again, it is the electronic manipulation of the guitar that rules. The transcendent stasis of these faceless tracks has a Buddhist quality, but it rarely manages to convey emotion (Fracture and Ruby-Ha). Monotony predominates, to the point that the techno pulse of Rex almost arrives as a welcome antidote. The album is perhaps less spontaneous and engaging than the first, but it is undoubtedly more innovative.
Disjecta is Clifford's solo project, inaugurated with two EPs, both titled Looking For Snags (Warp, 1994), later compiled on 1.0 (Warp, 1995). It was followed by Clean Pit & Lid (Warp, 1996), in the same vein of icy electronic music, but this time meticulously sculpted (Are You An Echo).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Clifford resurrected Disjecta several years later to indulge in the digital
landscapes of EP (Polyfusia, 2004).
Seymour recorded the experimental album Aurobindo (Touch).
Sarah Peacock and Daren Seymour launched the new project Scala
Seefeel reformed without Mark Van Hoen and adding Shigeru "DJ Scotch Egg" Ishihara and Kazuhisa "E-Da" Iida
(Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock the only original members)
for Seefeel (Warp, 2011), which was a completely different beast: glitch electronics.
