Quique by Seefeel (Review)

Seefeel was probably one of most criminally unknown bands of the whole shoegazer era in the early 90s. Overshadowed by groups like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, and Swervedriver, Seefeel released Quique in 1993 and it’s probably accurate to say that this album best bridged the gap between dreampop, techno, ambient, and jungle.

The beats and basslines on “Industrious” are laid down with mechanical precision, like assembly lines where Steve Reich is piped in over the PA, and “Imperial” is living proof that you can use words like “swirling” to describe ambience and not sound cliched. But it’s on the album’s mellower tracks where Seefeel shines.

Tracks like “Charlotte’s Mouth,” “Through You,” and “Signals” are the ultimate “bedroom ambient” songs. “Charlotte’s Mouth” has one of the most sensual basslines ever heard in ambient music, underscoring hovering, quasi-jazz atmospheres and subdued drum loops. On “Through You,” glassy specks of sound float around a slowly shifting mass of sound, like My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” slowed down and left to float over basslines recorded in the Chunnel. And the glacial layers of sound on “Signals” seems to stretch on forever, with beats that sound like satellite transmissions from somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy.

If this isn’t the music for late night zero-g trysts, where everything is bathed in various shades of blue and hours seem to stretch out until they no longer move, then I don’t know what is.