― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― impudent harlot, Thursday, 15 March 2007 09:27 (seventeen years ago) link
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Thursday, 15 March 2007 10:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dorf Engulf, Thursday, 15 March 2007 11:34 (seventeen years ago) link
― Masonic Boom, Thursday, 15 March 2007 11:36 (seventeen years ago) link
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 15 March 2007 13:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― Telephone thing, Thursday, 15 March 2007 13:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 15 March 2007 13:35 (seventeen years ago) link
it's a nice enough addition.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 15 March 2007 14:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― William Selman, Thursday, 15 March 2007 14:30 (seventeen years ago) link
― henry s, Thursday, 15 March 2007 17:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― Bill in Chicago, Thursday, 26 April 2007 00:51 (sixteen years ago) link
― JW, Thursday, 26 April 2007 01:14 (sixteen years ago) link
― f. hazel, Thursday, 26 April 2007 02:02 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― stephen, Friday, 12 October 2007 07:45 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― koogs, Friday, 12 October 2007 09:01 (sixteen years ago) link
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?)
― stephen, Friday, 12 October 2007 09:14 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― koogs, Friday, 12 October 2007 09:49 (sixteen years ago) link
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?
― stephen, Friday, 12 October 2007 10:21 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― Bill in Chicago, Friday, 12 October 2007 16:09 (sixteen years ago) link
What Bill said.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 12 October 2007 16:15 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― stephen, Friday, 12 October 2007 16:22 (sixteen years ago) link
> 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...
― koogs, Friday, 12 October 2007 17:06 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― Bill in Chicago, Friday, 12 October 2007 18:20 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― mehlt, Sunday, 21 October 2007 02:21 (sixteen years ago) link
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
― koogs, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 08:13 (sixteen years ago) link
Listening to Polyfusia right now. Completely forgot how stunningly gorgeous this record is.
― Alex in SF, Friday, 9 May 2008 17:59 (fifteen years ago) link
ah yes, stunning record. i think i'll join you in a spin.
― stephen, Friday, 9 May 2008 23:08 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― 26 Mixes Focaccia (Stevie D), Saturday, 13 December 2008 05:39 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― Cat-Wrangler (Pillbox), Saturday, 13 December 2008 05:55 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 30 March 2009 15:32 (fifteen years ago) link
I listened to this on Spotify and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I'll listen to it again now.
― Zayatte Mondatta (country matters), Monday, 30 March 2009 15:33 (fifteen years ago) link
Still prefer Ulrich Schnauss, mind. :p
― Zayatte Mondatta (country matters), Monday, 30 March 2009 15:39 (fifteen years ago) link
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!
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Monday, 30 March 2009 16:40 (fifteen years ago) link
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...
― ilxor, Monday, 30 March 2009 18:52 (fifteen years ago) link
The Starethrough EP is pretty great!
― f. hazel, Monday, 30 March 2009 19:10 (fifteen years ago) link
anything with "starethrough" on it is necessarily gonna be great, but which one? the warp cd one or the white label?
― GÖDEL ESCHER BOCK BOCK BOCK (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, 31 March 2009 01:24 (fifteen years ago) link
aren't they the same?
― f. hazel, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 05:46 (fifteen years ago) link
Still prefer Ulrich Schnauss, mind. :pCraziest talk on ILX yet!
― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 09:12 (fifteen years ago) link
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
― pshrbrn, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 09:16 (fifteen years ago) link
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.
― death from abroad (lukas), Monday, 4 May 2009 19:57 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― svend, Monday, 4 May 2009 22:58 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― Suggesteban Cambiasso (jim), Monday, 4 May 2009 23:01 (fourteen years ago) link
I prefer the Moby Dick pronunciation of "kwee-kway" but whatever, it's gorgeous.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Tuesday, 5 May 2009 06:16 (fourteen years ago) link
I was sure it was "Keek", at least that's what I remember.
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 08:41 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 10:22 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― pshrbrn, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 11:37 (fourteen years ago) link
"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?
― henry s, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 14:16 (fourteen years ago) link
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.
― the shane bourne identity (haitch), Wednesday, 12 August 2009 02:26 (fourteen years ago) link
yikes
― Evan, Thursday, 13 May 2021 21:32 (two years ago) link
Is this the CD?
― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing), Thursday, 13 May 2021 22:22 (two years ago) link
yeah.
i made it slightly better using audacity by cutting the silence out and smoothing down the join but it's not that simple. will have another try tomorrow.
― koogs, Thursday, 13 May 2021 23:08 (two years ago) link
wonder if the FLACs on Bandcamp will be corrected?
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Friday, 14 May 2021 00:11 (two years ago) link
sorry I'm drunk and eating ice cream
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Friday, 14 May 2021 00:12 (two years ago) link
cd3, ch-vox redux, sounds great though (and i don't know it as much as i thought i did)
― koogs, Friday, 14 May 2021 11:01 (two years ago) link
Just ordered the box; apparently the first edition sold out, but importcds had copies for $24 (cheaper than Bleep, and the shipping was *much* cheaper).
― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 14 May 2021 13:01 (two years ago) link
so, the things from compilations that are still not collected, a probably incomplete list
Sonics - https://touched.bandcamp.com/album/found-sound-2Ever Me - https://audioscope.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-a-good-home-3Is It Now and Ripley - https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/water-architectureLief - Ambient 4 "isolationism"Phase Maze - Melody Maker Quid Deal cassetteAcrobat - Warp 20 (Maximo Park cover!)When Face Was Face (isan remix) - Warp 10+3Air Eyes (In Her Emerald Mix) - Warp 10+3Spangle (Kid606 Rebootleg Remix) - https://soundcloud.com/kid606/seefeel-spangle-kid606
of which the only one i don't have is the last. less than i thought tbh, but i'm probably thinking of all the little disjecta bits that appeared on compilations and small releases. and the split with zavoloka which was a clifford solo release.
(that isan remix is one of my favourite things ever, they've basically used it as a backing track and written another tune over the top of it)
― koogs, Friday, 14 May 2021 17:44 (two years ago) link
(i lie. Touched "Found Sound 2" is different from "Touched 2" so that's another one i don't have)
― koogs, Friday, 14 May 2021 17:49 (two years ago) link
Oh, ta for pointing out that ISAN mix. I own it and love both ISAN and Seefeel ... but somehow I'd forgotten it's existence.
― djh, Friday, 14 May 2021 18:30 (two years ago) link
This was on a "Volume" mag/CD: Seefeel – Come Alive (Climatic Phase #1 Mix)
― djh, Friday, 14 May 2021 18:33 (two years ago) link
(that was also on the quique redux cd though, so i counted that as collected, just not on the new box. volume 7 fwiw)
― koogs, Friday, 14 May 2021 18:43 (two years ago) link
Ah, missed that it had been collected.
― djh, Friday, 14 May 2021 18:50 (two years ago) link
Time To Find Me (Saturnalia Mix) - The Sound Of Mob Culture(mp3 here https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/davecinzano/episodes/2006-09-20T12_10_49-07_00 )
― koogs, Friday, 14 May 2021 19:04 (two years ago) link
typically great Sherburne p4k piece on the reissues
The bass and drums, cornerstones of everything Seefeel had done until now, have momentarily fallen silent; this is a strictly liquid landscape, a vaporous guitar etude that twists like ink dissipating in water. It is the sound of pure electricity, exhausted and forlorn, a haunted dial tone singing deathbed lullabies.
― assert (MatthewK), Saturday, 15 May 2021 13:45 (two years ago) link
Just picked up the box at my local. Fingers crossed re the glitches (tho I'm not even sure I would notice.)
― henry s, Saturday, 15 May 2021 15:56 (two years ago) link
they are on the digital copies too, if the bleep website is indicative - you can hear the worst right at the end of their clip of Monastic.
i wonder if the second pressing will be different?
― koogs, Saturday, 15 May 2021 16:22 (two years ago) link
I'm guessing someone has actually told Warp??
― djh, Saturday, 15 May 2021 17:19 (two years ago) link
Hmmm. Maybe I'm not very good at this, but I don't detect any glitches at the end of "Monastic" on my copy.
― henry s, Saturday, 15 May 2021 17:51 (two years ago) link
not at the end, ~54 seconds in
(the sample on the bleep website is 60 seconds long so it's at the end of that)
― koogs, Saturday, 15 May 2021 17:56 (two years ago) link
Ah! Yep, there it is. At least it doesn't skip around, and perhaps this will be something of a collector's item someday, like that upside-down plane stamp.
― henry s, Saturday, 15 May 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link
on disc 2 track 9, you can hear them striking the same rib twice in succession yet they produce two clearly different tones
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Saturday, 15 May 2021 18:40 (two years ago) link
I emailed Warp on Friday (Aus time) so will see if I get a reply when they wake up today...I got my copy from Bleep, so the digital copies from Bleep are definitely affected.You can tell from the track lengths on Bandcamp that they are too.
FYI I made an edit of "Monastic" to get rid of the glitch - used some identical bars from later on.Don't want to share here because copyright, but if you own it and want to listen properly, DM me? (I'm here so rarely I don't even know how that works!)
― raven, Sunday, 16 May 2021 23:05 (two years ago) link
Monastic is a previously-unreleased track, no? Maybe the glitch is meant to be there.
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Sunday, 16 May 2021 23:31 (two years ago) link
raven's fix is nice btw, invisible mending, i was impressed.
i would say from both hearing and seeing that it's not deliberate. it occurs only once and the hole is too ragged, the silence too flat.
― koogs, Monday, 17 May 2021 01:59 (two years ago) link
Thanks koogs, yeah I've done this before :)Agreed, it's not deliberate. There's actually part of at least a bar missing, and a tiny bit of pure silence. It's a mistake.
Haven't heard back from Warp yet (but then why would they reply to some random? Well, maybe they will.)
― raven, Monday, 17 May 2021 08:51 (two years ago) link
Fairly certain that if you're suggesting something is faulty then they should/would.
― djh, Thursday, 20 May 2021 17:41 (two years ago) link
They ain't, I'm afraid.I just posted a comment on Warp's Facebook page to try and get their attention :)
― raven, Friday, 21 May 2021 12:46 (two years ago) link
These might be sourced from downmix DATs so could it be a tape dropout/error?
― assert (MatthewK), Friday, 21 May 2021 20:29 (two years ago) link
I decided to fire up Audacity and fix the Monastic glitch as well... it's pretty wild that we're at a point where we (well, we're probably more on the nerd end of society than the average) can just kinda casually correct such errors and get on with things... sure the glitch is on the CD, but I listen to the FLACs or mp3s 99% of the time so
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Sunday, 30 May 2021 18:39 (two years ago) link
So nobody ever got a reply from Warp about this, hey?They're just gonna slide on, pretending there's nothing wrong?
― raven, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 13:34 (two years ago) link
I read on the Hoffman forum that they are fixing it for the second pressing. I understand they have withdrawn the first pressing for sale. Its listed as 'available in mid July' or something. A manufacturing error that is not on the DATs.
― ringworm, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 16:56 (two years ago) link
I wonder if that's why I never got my physical copy?
― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 16:58 (two years ago) link
Interesting to hear, ringworm! Wonder if those of us who got the first pressing (at least direct) will get a fix...
― raven, Thursday, 10 June 2021 03:41 (two years ago) link
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/
― ringworm, Thursday, 10 June 2021 08:17 (two years ago) link
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"
― ringworm, Thursday, 10 June 2021 08:19 (two years ago) link
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.
― with hidden noise, Friday, 11 June 2021 01:36 (two years ago) link
new interview here:
https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-070-seefeel
― disraeli grinds my gears (NickB), Monday, 28 June 2021 13:45 (two years ago) link
Great interview!
I wonder if Mark and Sarah ever saw this? (forward to 9'59")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLGs41vQ8EU
― Maresn3st, Monday, 28 June 2021 14:10 (two years ago) link
"Sarah lived in Basingstoke!" was one of my main takeaways from the interview (I also did).
― djh, Monday, 28 June 2021 18:27 (two years ago) link
KMRU mix: https://bleep.com/release/257438-seefeel-rapture-to-rupt
(or a free version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFaIBt7Akz4)
― djh, Wednesday, 1 December 2021 19:38 (two years ago) link
call me when they make another album with the self-title lineup
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 1 December 2021 22:29 (two years ago) link
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)
― koogs, Monday, 10 January 2022 17:47 (two years ago) link
just “keek” isn’t it? Poor kid.
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, 10 January 2022 19:33 (two years ago) link
It's been a name in Spanish for at least a century if not longer, but sounds like ki-kay.
― Jaime Pressly and America (f. hazel), Monday, 10 January 2022 19:38 (two years ago) link
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.
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, 10 January 2022 20:10 (two years ago) link
Now his brother Filter Dub...
― Jaime Pressly and America (f. hazel), Monday, 10 January 2022 20:16 (two years ago) link
Any idea if ordering this now gets the corrected CDs without the two issues noted above? Anyone ordered a copy recently?
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 11 January 2022 16:18 (two years ago) link
Mark is interviewed in this RA podcast from a couple of months back:https://ra.co/exchange/586
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Thursday, 20 January 2022 19:17 (two years ago) link