Bleep

Born out of a necessity to challenge and explore, Seefeel's Quique was everything a debut album should be: excitingly filling a niche with a sound just outside of any definable genre, and cohesive yet nascent, hinting at endless possibilities. It's no wonder the band had found early supporters in the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Cocteau Twins when they emerged in 1993; Seefeel were kindred experimenters, filtering those timeless influences into an album that, over thirty years later, remains utterly gripping.

Though hailed as a shoegaze turned techno band, it takes several minutes before any discernible trace of the rock / pop guitar canon can be heard on the opening ‘Climactic Phase #3’ as a wiggling bass riff enters. Even then, this isn't shoegaze's telltale wall of sound, but a bath of it instead: an implacable timbre like a reedy sea of radio signals fills up, downtempo rhythms tiptoe curiously, airy loops joyfully sway. Quique's ebullient and painterly exhilarations got Seefeel enrolled in the school of Artificial Intelligence as they signed to Warp the next year, presciently seen in the ecstatically teetering and seesawing ‘Plainsong’ with its mantric lyrics, or the shatters and clatters of ‘Industrious’ where shards of silver rhythms are met with blissful repetition.

Much of the album's action is delivered in repetitive loops as Seefeel broke from less satisfying traditional structures. ‘Polyfusion’ is built around a hypnotic continuity of drums and bass, gentle sirenic vocals hanging in the centre as a brazen rallying cry hovers in the background. The guitar textures take amorphous forms, shredding metallically or lilting and lurching like violins, dripping and rippling in dubwise effects while loose stepping bass cuts clean through.

Quique Redux collects further magic from their early years, embracing the realm of song as ‘Clique’ introduces an enrapturing groove, yet remaining firmly leftfield with the otherworldly rumbles and shuffles of ‘Come Alive’, its chilly buzz reinvigorated halfway through as the bass helps splashing drums to defrost. Unearthing the crisp drum machine slowburn of ‘Time To Find Me’ helped Seefeel find new directions for their following self-titled album, while showing us the electric elegance hiding in their archives.

After Seefeel returned in 2024, Too Pure give us a timely reminder of the album that kicked off decades of experimentation.