seefeel thread for discussion of relevant informations pertaining to the "quique redux" 2cd superbonus reissue (and other seefeel matters)

it's a nice enough addition.

So, i just picked up all the Seefeel albums...

_Quique
_Succour
_Ch-Vox

...the other day, as well as the EP collection...

_Polyfusia

...and am wondering, what's the best place to start listening to these albums? Should I go chronologically, or in some other order, and why? Also, what are the highlights of each disc, or what should I be on the lookout (listenout?) for with each one? Any other thoughts on Seefeel in general, or these albums?

Thanks, ILM.

The three Polyfusia releases are cheap on bleep currently - new disjecta ep, autechre remix of spangle and Clifford's new album with Kealoha(?)

http://www.bleep.com/?label=Polyfusia

stephen, choronologically, because they get weirder (and, to me, more interesting). the Ch-Vox is a lot like the Disjecta things on warp rather than Seefeely. Fracture / Tied and Starethrough EPs also essential i think.

Fracture / Tied and Starethrough EPs also essential i think.
-- koogs, Friday, October 12, 2007 9:01 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

hey thanks!

(by which i assume you mean, those two EPs have some pretty nice exclusives, yes?)

yes, and are also some of the best things they've done. plus i like the cover of fracture / tied - designers republic, nice heavy orange card, silver ink, slight embossing...

also worth a listen:
isan remix of when face was face
http://www.cocteautwins.com/html/discography/discog_23.html (cocteaus remixed by clifford)
2x disjecta mini lps on warp

oh wow! i have that Cocteaus EP, think it's pleasant enough for late Cocteaus material but i haven't given it more than a couple spins really. i had no idea some guy from Seefeel was involved either. i'll have to pull that out tomorrow, then...

thanks!

anyone else?

Listen to them chronologically as there is definitely a development of their sound and it can be divided into two halves: Too Pure releases and post-Too Pure releases. While the first ep (More Like Space) doesn't sound like a rock band, except for the last track, you can get a sense of rock composition from the songs. This gets thrown out the window on Plainsong when they start adding more and more layers and definitely go for a machine vibe. Quique has moments when it sounds like a rock band, but most of all it's the pinnacle of layering and density in the early sound. Imperial is one of my favorite pieces of music ever.

When they switched to Warp (you really should get Starethrough because it's fucking incredible), they started to strip back the elements so that by the time you get to Ch-Vox, it's so sparse, it's almost like listening to sonar blips. There are some fine moments on these records, but I admit I prefer the earlier ones more. Also, if you can locate it, their contributions to the Ancient Lights and the Black Core compilation on Sub Rosa are some of the highlights of their later work.

What Bill said.

Bill, thanks, that's a fantastic summary. I'm really looking forward to these now, more so than before. I checked the 4 songs on Starethrough, doesn't look like there's any overlap with their full-lengths (or maybe 1 track, i forget). watching a copy of that on eBay right now ;-) so i'll try to snag it for a few bucks.

> Also, if you can locate it, their contributions to the Ancient Lights and the Black Core compilation on Sub Rosa are some of the highlights of their later work.

lots very cheap listed on amazon.com. if only i knew a tame american who could pick up a copy for me...

Nope, Starethrough is all non-album material. I remember buying it when it came out and wondering if it was the same band that put out Quique--it's that different from its predecessor.

Also, I highly recommend Mark Clifford's collaboration with Simon Kealoha on Clifford's Polyfusia label. Running Taper is the name. It's much more of a software-processed affair than his other work and sorta reclaims the space between Seefeel and Fennesz.

Otherwise, I think the other side projects are less than the sum of the whole band. There are a few Scala tracks that I like, but they never really did much for me. The first Disjecta album is good (because Looking for Snags sounds exactly like Dubstep circa 1995), but after that until the collaboration mentioned above, I unfortunately found Clifford's stuff hit-or-miss to completely uninteresting. If you can find it, Mark Van Hoen (their engineer aka Locust) put out a really good album in the late 90s called Playing with Time.

I bought the original last week, as it was available used. I used to be a bit ambivalent about Seefeel, but damn, this album is amazing.

http://www.bleep.com/?bleep=FUS005

new release on polyfusia. 4 track ep.

01 - Blue-Fi1 (3:32) - Mark Clifford
02 - Blue-Fi2 (2:58) - Mark Clifford
03 - Prychynna (4:31) - Zaudloka
04 - Rankova (Midnight Edit) (6:49) - Zaudloka

Listening to Polyfusia right now. Completely forgot how stunningly gorgeous this record is.

ah yes, stunning record. i think i'll join you in a spin.

It makes me sad that this band isn't as widely revered as, say, The Orb. They really deserve much more praise than they get.

You'd think there would have been primed for some serious critical re-appraisal about 5 years ago or so, when all those MBV-meets-laptronica bands like (early)M83, Ulrich Schnauss & all the Morr acts started popping up all over the place. That shit has Seefeel's fingerprints all over it.

Haha, I was about to post here saying what Pillbox just said. I finally snagged this reissue over the weekend and hearing it now in 2009 in such a context is breathtaking. But what's interesting is that while it does predate those styles and predicts them, Quique very much is its own sound, and there's things going on almost track for track (like the astonishing bassline on "Industrious") that few of the modern bunch are either able or willing to try.

I listened to this on Spotify and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I'll listen to it again now.

Still prefer Ulrich Schnauss, mind. :p

This album came out right around the time I started buying CDs (instead of tapes, ya I M old) and somehow I never got around to buying it on CD or on vinyl, even though I had virtually everything else in Seefeel's catalogue on one of those formats. So basically, since all of my tapes are stashed away somewhere now, I hadn't listened to "Quique" in ages before I bought the reissue. And yeah, it was astonishing to hear it again. It sounds so fresh, novel, and unpredictable these days, which is weird because at the time a lot of people dismissed them as MBV/Cocteau Twins rip-off fetishists!

Yeah this is a 10/10 star totally great album, unfuckwithable. I dug out the reissue last week also and listened to it and was of course blown away.

Does anyone rate the stuff that comes after Quique? I like Polyfusia well enough but haven't given much time to Ch-Vox or that other record of theirs that came later...

The Starethrough EP is pretty great!

anything with "starethrough" on it is necessarily gonna be great, but which one? the warp cd one or the white label?

aren't they the same?

Still prefer Ulrich Schnauss, mind. :p
Craziest talk on ILX yet!

Succor remains my favorite Seefeel by a mile.... they've lost some of the shoegazing qualities, in favor of a more ambient/dub/isolationist character. One of the best things Rephlex ever released; still can't understand why this hasn't gotten a reissue.

http://www.discogs.com/Seefeel-Succour/release/3617

there's things going on almost track for track (like the astonishing bassline on "Industrious") that few of the modern bunch are either able or willing to try

Mebbe cuz the Seefeel guys were at one point rockers? Whereas I could never truly accept M83 as a rock act. Most of Seefeel's distinctiveness, to me, from a 2009 standpoint comes from the feeling that the boundaries between electronic music and rock are still porous.

Seefeel fans, set those turntables to stun! Hot off the heels of Too Pure’s revamped reissuance of the late, lamented London quartet’s 1993 opus Quique, we are beyond thrilled to announce that we’ll bringing this outstanding release to your hi-fi as a 4-platter vinyl set early next year. This fabtabulous offering will be limited to 500 copies (100 of them blue) and brought to you in beautiful gatefold packaging. Nearly 15 years after its debut, this daring exercise in ambient glory sounds every bit as ambitious as it did then, so don’t miss this rare opportunity to rediscover this long out-of-print masterwork in fantastic wax.

That was late 2007 on a clairecords newsletter, guess it never happened.

i thought this was pronounced KEE-KAY, like the diminutive of Enrique. Thank you strongo hulkington (RIP) for educating me so i don't make a faux-pas in a hypothetical future Seafeel conversation that I may have.

I prefer the Moby Dick pronunciation of "kwee-kway" but whatever, it's gorgeous.

I was sure it was "Keek", at least that's what I remember.

I have been mentally pronouncing it as "kweekweh" but that is because I keep thinking it's a Latin word like "quisque" or "quoque" and it isn't. But as yet I've never had any call to talk about it out loud.

Whoops, Succour was on Warp (as the link I provided showed!). And MP3s are available on Bleep.com! Let the record show that I'm an idiot.

"Keek" is how reviewers were describing the pronunciation at the time...while we on the topic, how's Tricky's debut pronounced?...Max-In-Kway or Max-In-Key?...or neither?...or both?

had not actually encountered this record before finding it the other day; love the way everything just billows outwards around those basslines.

do you think they'll give the re-ish treatment to any of the other stuff? probably gets a bit complicated when it's spread over different labels.

I thought if anyone was gonna complain about audio quality/glitches they'd be all over it. Sure'nuff a quick google turned up their thread! https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/seefeel-reissues-may-14-2021.1076263/

Someone pasted this from Bleep, I think
"We are aware of this, yes. I have been speaking to the production team at Warp today and they are hoping to get these issues resolved asap in terms of replacing discs (including for those who have already purchased) and updating the digital downloads where necessary"

Interesting to read in the Simon Reynolds interview that "Charlotte's Mouth" turned into "Starethrough" which then turned into "Ch-vox" – been listening to those for years, but never caught the (pretty clear) similarity until playing them one after another.

new interview here:

https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-070-seefeel

Great interview!

I wonder if Mark and Sarah ever saw this? (forward to 9'59")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLGs41vQ8EU

"Sarah lived in Basingstoke!" was one of my main takeaways from the interview (I also did).

KMRU mix: https://bleep.com/release/257438-seefeel-rapture-to-rupt

(or a free version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFaIBt7Akz4)

call me when they make another album with the self-title lineup

one of the kids on Junior Bake-Off is called 'Quique'

(kee-kay they are pronouncing it, i've always put a w in it, or two)

just “keek” isn’t it? Poor kid.

It's been a name in Spanish for at least a century if not longer, but sounds like ki-kay.

Oh that’s good to know, I just imagined it was some sad dude like myself imposing his idea of taste. Glad I was merely ignorant.

Now his brother Filter Dub...

Any idea if ordering this now gets the corrected CDs without the two issues noted above? Anyone ordered a copy recently?

Mark is interviewed in this RA podcast from a couple of months back:
https://ra.co/exchange/586

23.07.2024 pic.twitter.com/w76kOH6ZRf

— Seefeel (@seefeel_signals) July 19, 2024

And full news up -- new EP in a few weeks:

https://bleep.com/seefeel-everything-squared

I will have a little something more to add about all this myself around then.

> sold-out Cafe OTO show

you what what?

> I will have a little something more to add about all this myself around then.

Ooh!

And now all can be revealed!

https://thequietus.com/interviews/seefeel-mark-clifford-post-rock-interview/

A wonderful chat for sure!

they rerecorded spangle in 2019? did i miss that?

oh Sp/Ga 19, is on rupt/flex

And now you know.

I really enjoyed that. What a thoughtful person. I love reading about the creative process. As an older guy who's been at it for many years, I can kind of relate to some of it, not that I'll ever do it on a professional level. I wonder if he's able to mostly focus on music or if he has a career outside of music.

Our own unperson with a new piece in turn on That There Seefeel:

https://burningambulance.substack.com/p/seefeel

both great pieces!

somehow i am at the cafe oto show rn - will report back

Excellence! Yeah what's the current lineup, is it the same one as back in 2019?

Trio, not sure who was on bass but Clifford and peacock definitely. It was great, and sort of sweet - sort of saw the seams a bit more, felt more band-y and less studio-y. some crushing dubby moments and very unclear connection between what Clifford was doing with his hands and what I heard out of the amps. I was only in London for a night and agog I ended up there

Awesome for sure.

I hope they eventually can get to the states again, that 2019 show was tremendous

I'm certain that Extract from Succour has a sample of your dude dying in Contra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxpypHSuuro

Snes death at 1:39

I hope they eventually can get to the states again, that 2019 show was tremendous

Per my interview with Mark, he definitely would love to come back so it won't be for lack of trying.

that new EP is astonishing

also i still play the s/t a lot... only good music in the seefeel catalog

For a second I thought you were saying 'the' only good music and I was going to abjure you.

Haha yeah I was like “…. What….”

haha oops. well i don't think the s/t gets enough love tbf

Aw yeah, new release now up:

https://seefeel.bandcamp.com/album/squared-roots

Is the touring version of Seefeel now just Mark Clifford? I was happy to find out that they're playing in Florence in April in a great space (https://www.musicusconcentus.com/sala-vanni-firenze/). The description here makes it sound like it's him and an A/V guy:

. . . questo A/V live show vede protagonisti il fondatore dei Seefeel Mark Clifford assieme all’artista visuale Dan Conway: uno show unico, capace di immergere lo spettatore nelle atmosfere musicali del celebre gruppo inglese.

If it's Mark Clifford and yer gran on bongoes, it's still Seefeel.

Ha, kinda. When I interviewed him a few months back he didn't give any indication that the general core live lineup had changed much, but I do get a sense it can be a bit ad hoc depending on availability, with Sarah living in Berlin etc.

https://boomkat.com/products/quique-redux-edition-3bddc8d9-0483-45a1-be03-48039bcbbf04

quique redux 2025 remaster?

same tracklisting

(oh, i read march as may, so this is out already)

wait, is this a remaster of a remaster?

oddly the boomkat newsletter today was touting a quique non-redux 2025 remaster.

(which makes 4 versions now)

https://boomkat.com/products/pure-impure-expanded-edition

cd actually cheaper than the two original eps from 94/95