Double LP
Bizarrely out of print for not far off two decades, Seefeel's landmark debut is now back in print as a smartly presented double disc set. 'Landmark' is a term that mostly belongs to the heteroglossia of label generated press releases and record collector wackjobs, so I use it carefully here. How better to understand Quique's uniting of shoegaze introspection, hollowed out dub bass, ambient isolationism, chirruping electronics and smoky trip hop allure? A whole NTS aesthetic folded into a single hour some 25 years before its inception. That's prescience! And not to be discourteous, but listening back to tracks like 'Polyfusion' and 'Charlotte's Mouth' in 2025, there's a clear roadmap being drawn in its sensual dreamworld of after-hours mystery for so much of what is considered cutting edge now. Any number of acts from the West Mineral/3XL/sferic++ axis owe a debt to the language being devised here, a language that arrived out of ingenuity and intuitive understanding - indeed, founding member Mark Clifford sees Quique as partly a product of the limitations imposed by restricted access and minimal understandings of new technologies. None of the gear and all of the ideas. There's plenty still to learn from such off-piste thinking. More still to be inspired by. Landmark, yes. Monumental, even more so. Unequivocal 10/10.
