When new sounds from Seefeel final filtered in, they sounded older than ever. Mark Clifford, Sarah Peacock, and numerous collaborators had, for some twenty years, distilled the aquatic shoegaze rave of early classics like 1993’s Quique into the minerally syrup of 1995’s Succour, the chemical fumes of the next yr’s (Ch-Vox) after which, lastly, the sensible and parched sediment of 2011’s Seefeel, so vibrant you needed to squint at it. By that time, their grooves have been extra mud than dub. The timeless now of their lengthy, pretty songs had pale into unstable reminiscences, after which acts of remembering, by way of fascinating reissues in packages that felt like terminal excavations.
Which makes Every little thing Squared, Seefeel’s mini-album of recent recordings, such an surprising pleasure. It’s not simply that Clifford has discovered a route again to the previous methods, though, blissfully, he has; nor merely that there’s nonetheless an viewers for such endeavors. The pleasure of this half hour lies in its optimism—its religion that a lot might be fabricated from so little, nonetheless.
“Lose the Minus,” for instance, presents solely the important: a easy bass tone that manages to each defy gravity and hint its results; a whisper of melody; Peacock’s voice, glistening with a easy FX gloss. A guitar vibrates, then crests. It’s over. It’s sufficient. Whereas equally transient, “Finish of Right here” is form of its reverse, an train in fullness fabricated from fuzz and decay. It’s virtually an excessive amount of, then it leaves you alone.
Elsewhere, Clifford and Peacock let themselves stretch. The beguiling “Hooked Paw” swaps out the band’s sonar blips for crunchy constructing blocks that tumble into thick, bassy depths. Seefeel will not be precisely a cool band, however they swing greater than they’re given credit score for. And with its scratched, metallic body, “Antiskeptic” reminds you that Seefeel’s roots are as a lot industrial as ambient. The crooking rhythm is a form of window by which vibrant streaks of synths arch and scatter. Sometimes, trance chords flash like synthetic lightning. The world-building creates rigidity. Seefeel’s early now turns into what’s going to occur subsequent?
Peacock’s voice typically solutions that query. She belongs within the pantheon of vocalists—from friends like Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher to modern wonders like Seashore Home’s Victoria Legrand and extra eaze and L’Rain, and naturally the miraculous Elizabeth Fraser—who determine methods to sing with out at all times forming phrases. As an alternative, Peacock makes moments. In “Hooked Paw,” a murmur turns into a corridor of mirrors. In opener “Sky Hooks,” her voice is the star, shining entrance and middle in an association of foggy bass, swooping pads, and crowds of scorching noise and chimes that collect to kind the monitor’s climax earlier than vanishing into echoes. Peacock presents navigation and, possibly, even a form of narrative to observe.
