Seefeel - Everything Squared (2024)
As I was strolling on the streets at night, something made me decide upon checking out this fresh new release from Seefeel, one of my all-time favorite bands, even though I haven't followed much their whereabouts over the last decade, predictably disappointed as I was with the rather different sound of their self-titled return album...
Mid-way through the EP, I was passing on a road about which I had received an article in my news feed that there was an explosion earlier while workers were working on the underground utility pipes. Then a really intense smell of sweets, cakes, chocolates surrounded me, as if the chocolate factory that is on this road also exploded! The music was already building up a high for me, but then my synesthesia got turned up to 11, and I was blissfully eating up the sweet musical textures... Unbelievable.
I still feel a bit bad about having been of those "lame" fans who downvoted Seefeel's previous album for departing from the engrossing minimalism of their 90s output, and now also a bit ashamed about being just as predictably a pleased fan, for them having basically returned to their signature sound... But then do I really have to get negative feelings about it? I will love forever 90s Seefeel, and I am loving this too, do I really have to feel differently?
For what is worth, Mark Clifford suggests he wasn't trying to make a crowd pleaser. In an interview given for The Quietus, he says that he felt at least some of the older material could have been done better and with more attention to details. So in a way one can perceive this as an extension of the B-sides from those years (and clearly, some of the guitar loops on these tracks could have been on Quique or maybe especially Succour or Starethrough), yet the sound design is a tad more modern, at times resembling a bit Exai-era Autechre or some fresher stuff (think "UK Bass"). Generally, the sounds are on here more intense and saturated...
Nostalgic fans like me will probably get the most out of it, and the fact that they chose this time not to push the envelope in reinventing themselves anymore could bring a further decline of interest... but it would be a shame. These new songs made me press replay like very few other albums did for me in years.