At the beginning of the nineties, Seefeel, originally formed of Mark Clifford, Sarah Peacock, Justin Fletcher and Mark Van Hoen, who was later replaced with Darren Seymour, found themselves treading the boundary between shoegaze, then in its dying days, and the rising electronica movement, releasing three seminal albums and a handful of EPs between 1993 and 1996. Then, although the four never officially split up, Seefeel was put on an indefinite hold. Now back, with two new members, a new album and a forthcoming tour, we took the opportunity to speak with Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock about the very idea of Seefeel, their renewed focus and what may be the beginning of a new era for the band.

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It’s been fifteen years since Seefeel last released a record, and even longer since they stopped performing live. The band returned to the stage at the end of 2008 for a unique live performance as part of the Warp20 celebrations in Paris. Prompted by an enthusiastic reception from Warp honcho Steve Beckett, Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock, now with new members Shigeru Ishihara and Ilda Kazuhisa, got back in the studio and began working on new songs. The result first materialised with Faults last year, then with a self-titled album, both showing a band experimenting with much rawer and angular forms. Coinciding with the release of this fourth album, the band played a headlining performance at Kings Place, ahead of a series of live dates which will take them through the UK, Europe and beyond in the coming months. Continue Reading »

SEEFEEL
Seefeel
WARP205
Warp Records 2011
09 Tracks. 51mins35secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Fourteen years on from their last album, and with two new members on board, the return of one of the most highly regarded bands of the early nineties is something of a major event. Seefeel never actually split up, but its members had, since the release of (Ch-Vox) on Rephlex back in 1996, focused on various projects and appeared to have drifted apart in such a way that it seemed totally unimaginable to see them working together again. It is the release of an expanded version of Seefeel’s seminal debut album, Quique, by Too Pure in 2007 which brought Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock back talking. Since, the band, now counting Shigery Ishihara, better known as DJ Scotch Egg, and Ilda ‘E-Da’ Kazuhisa, have performed a handful of live dates, including one in Paris as part of the Warp20 celebrations, and returned in September last year with a brand new EP, Faults, now followed by this new album.

One of the prerequisites of the band ever recording again was always to create something different from anything they had done before. Continue Reading »

Despite having only released one album and a couple of singles for the label, Seefeel are one of Warp’s most emblematic acts. Over a year ago, the band was resurrected, the time, it seemed, of a celebratory set as part of the opening event for Warp’s twentieth anniversary bash in Paris. That was without counting on the persuasive powers of Warp co-founder and head, Steve Beckett, who got on the band’s case and convinced them to work together again and finally give a follow up to the stunning and seminal Quique, Succour and (Ch-Vox), the band’s three albums to date.

The reunion actually dates back to 2007, when Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock found themselves answering questions about the freshly expanded Quique, reissued by Too Pure. Continue Reading »

SEEFEEL
Faults
WAP299
Warp Records 2010
04 Tracks. 18mins59secs
Format: 10″/Digital

Amazon UK: 10″ | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

While Seefeel never officially split up, the project has been lying dormant for well over a decade. The band, was originally formed of Mark Clifford (guitar and programming), Sarah Peacock (guitar and vocals), Mark Van Hoen (bass) and Justin Fletcher (drums), until Van Hoen was replaced with Daren Seymour in 1992. Seefeel evolved on the fringe of shoegaze and were for a while closely associated with the Cocteau Twins, with whom they toured, yet their approach relied increasingly on heavily processed guitars and abstract ambient soundscapes which earned them considerable respect in electronica circles. In the space of three albums and a handful of EPs, released on Too Pure, Warp and Rephlex, they established a sound which remains to this day highly influential and totally unique. Following the release of their third album, (Ch-Vox) on Rephlex in 1996, Clifford concentrated on solo projects Disjecta and Wodenspoon, and collaborative efforts with Simon Kelaoha, better known as Calika, vocalist Sophie Hinkley as part of Sneakster, and more recently with Mira Calix, while Peacock, Seymour and Fletcher went on to form Scala. Clifford and Peacock were reunited three years ago as Too Pure issued an expanded version of the band’s 1993 debut album, Quique, and the idea of working together again slowly began to emerge. Continue Reading »

SEEFEEL
Quique (Redux Edition)
PURE194CD
Too Pure 1993 / 2007
18 Tracks. 123mins41secs

Riding high on the wave created by earlier nineties indie luminaries such as My Bloody Valentine, Seefeel took the concept of cloudy guitar-led music, once labelled shoegaze, a reference to the recurring tendencies adopted by most bands at the time to never look up, and brought it to an entirely different level by confronting it with the ambient sound pioneered by Aphex Twin, Global Communication and The Orb. Formed of Mark Clifford (guitar, sequencing), Sarah Peacock (guitar, vocals), Darren Seymour (bass) and Justin Fletcher (drums, programming), the band develop a totally unique blend of processed guitars, rhythmic loops and hypnotic bass, with occasional hazy vocals textures. Continue Reading »

MARK VAN HOEN
The Revenant Diary
EMEGO136
Editions Mego 2012
11 Tracks. 54mins16secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

From his days in Seefeel, Croydon-born Mark Van Hoen has always operated between electronica and pop music. Having left the band before they recorded their debut EP to pursue his solo career, he signed to Belgian dance label R&S in 1993 and began to release music as Locust, a project which occupied most of his time for the next seven years and resulted in as many albums. It is during that time that he began integrating lyrics and vocals in his compositions, and it is a feature which has remained fairly consistent ever since, whether through his personal projects or as a member of Scala, formed with former Seefeel members Daren Seymour, Justin Fletcher and Sarah Peacock.

The Revenant Diary is Van Hoen’s fifth album published under his name and his first for Editions Mego. It is also the follow up to last year’s Where Is The Truth (City Centre Offices), which marked Van Hoen’s return after a six year hiatus. Continue Reading »

As another year folds out, it is time once again to look back and take stock or the highs and lows, before a fresh year rolls in. 2011 has had its moments and has overall been a rather good year, and trying to extract a list of twenty albums from the hundreds, thousands possibly, that I have listened to, loved, hated, reviewed or not, tried to make sense of or misunderstood seems a pretty restrictive effort at best. Still, it is always good to look back and realise that some records have made more of a mark than others, some almost imperceptibly. So, here is, in twenty records, what 2011 was made of…

1.

JENNY HVAL
Viscera
Rune Grammofon

Review:
There is such urgency throughout this record that it is quite astonishing how Hval manages to retain any lightness in her music, but she does, and [Helge] Sten picks up on just enough to bring it all to life in sprightly bright colours and tones. Continue Reading »

AUTECHRE
EPS 1991-2002
WARPCD211
Warp Records 2011
47 Tracks. 339mins59secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD iTunes: DLD

For years, Autechre alternated albums and EPs with extreme regularity, the latter often acting as experimental playgrounds for Sean Booth and Rob Brown to try out new ideas. This release documents the first ten years of the band, from their very first, pre-Warp, outting to Gantz Graf. While Autechre have continued to release occasional EPs after that, they have been less prolific with that format in recent years, only two, Quaristice.Quadrange and Move Of Ten, having materialised, the former solely made available as a digital release, both counting too many tracks to be considered proper EPs. Continue Reading »

GARETH HARDWICK
Of The Sea And Shore
LP035
Low Point 2010
02 Tracks. 36mins46secs

“Solo ambient/drone guitar pieces, played and recorded by someone you’ve never heard of.” This succinct introduction lifted from Gareth Hardwick’s myspace page tells a lot and not much at once. The founder and head of Low Point, a small imprint based in Nottingham, England which has been distilling some mighty fine electro-acoustic ambient music for almost half a decade now, Hardwick is before all an accomplished musician who, as a solo artist, has been releasing music since 2006, including a handful of split releases with Machinefabriek, Matt Rösner or Taiga Remains.

Of The Sea And Shore, Hardwick’s third full length, is split into two tracks, each lasting just under twenty minutes. Each track is itself split into sections of various lengths and shapes, some spanning quite a substantial portion of the track, others acting as short sonic interludes. Continue Reading »

CALIKA
Blood Embrace
AB031
Audiobulb Records 2010
11 Tracks. 48mins48secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

Brighton-based Simon Kealoha is back on Audiobulb with his fourth full length slice of refined electro-acoustic in five year, his first album since Seedling Mother (Audiobulb, 2007), following the two EPs released last year, Crooked, once again on Audiobulb, and Slack Jaw on Highpoint Lowlife. Ever since he first appeared, in 2005, with his debut album, Small Talk Kills Me, Kealoha has been refining his sound, bringing together acoustic and electronic elements into complex and fragile formations. Beside working on his own project, Kealoha has also collaborated with Seefeel mastermind Mark Clifford on the excellent Running Taper, an album published on Clifford’s Polyfusia Records in 2005, and on a second opus which came close to be released two years later but appears to have been victim of the demise of the label.

Announced as a more stripped down and bare record, Blood Embrace remains a pretty intricate and organic collection, at times surprisingly light and airy, at others radical and dense. Continue Reading »

The South Bank’s Ether Festival, now in its ninth edition, has already seen a host of memorable performances this year, with a weekend of events around the work of Edgar Varèse, the premiere of a new piece by Philip Glass and an evening with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio. Invited to take over the Queen Elizabeth Hall on this Wednesday evening were Birmingham’s finest, retro future pop stalwarts Broadcast, who in just a handful of records in well over ten years of existence have time and time again proved to be the most essential band the UK has produced in years.

Laptop and cello were the backbone of cellist Oliver Coates’s opening set, first in extremely minimal form with cello played over an arid and dissonant drone and clusters of distant field recordings (one could spot in turn the ebb and flow of the sea or the threatening pull of gusts of wind, amongst other things). Continue Reading »