Seefeel

Seefeel were formed in London in 1991, frontman Mark Clifford finding like-minded souls in the pages of magazines and on college noticeboards. After signing to the influential Too Pure label in 1992, the band’s first album, ‘Quique’ was released in 1993 to exited critical reviews. writing in the Melody Maker, Simon Reynolds called it ‘a blanched canvas for the imagination’ and later reviewing a live show added ‘the listener is swaddled and swathed in synaesthesia, cocooned in caressing sound-and-vision’. It was one of the influential magazine’s albums of the year. On its reissue in 2007, Pitchfork called it ‘a masterful debut album’ in which ‘you’ll hear the beginnings of a still-thriving genre that remains slippery and unnamed, purely electronic music with a strange, tangy rock aftertaste…timeless’. In 1994, the band decamped to Warp Records where they have remained since, albeit with some extended hiatuses. The 1995 album ‘Succour’, while a darker and more difficult work, nevertheless gleaned widespread critical appreciation. Writing in the NME, Sharon O’Connell stated “Succour provides both everything and nothing and is just as much a minefield as a treasure trove. It’s beautiful. Be careful”. In 2017, Pitchfork placed ‘Succour’ as one of the 30 Best IDM Albums Of All Time, remarkable for a band essentially using guitars. The band gained many influential fans, including the Cocteau Twins, whom the band would later tour with and for whom Mark Clifford would do four remixes as the ‘Otherness’ EP. After more touring, the band took a break which turned into a 12 year hiatus. After seeing the band play for the first time in many years at the Warp 20 show in Paris, Steve Beckett encouraged the band to record another album for Warp, which they did. The self-titled album came out in 2011. The Guardian newspaper observed “instruments glitched and phased into near-oblivion, their riffs reborn as weird digital signatures…….A hugely impressive rebirth” Seefeel are currently in the process of writing their fifth studio album which will hopefully surface early 2017.