Halfway between the often connected worlds of British indie rock and experimental techno,
but set the whole in a framework of electronic beats and loops. Begun as a standard rock band in early 1992, the quartet soon grew bored within the restraints of normal musical forms and started working with loops and programs rather than lyrics and choruses; after the release of two albums,
Guitarist
Mark Clifford and drummer
Justin Fletcher met up at a London college, and by 1992 the duo had recruited vocalist
Sarah Peacock and bassist
Darren Seymour.
Seefeel began auditioning songs and was ready to record their first single for Too Pure Records, but experienced a change of heart that caused the resulting EP More Like Space to owe more of a debt to
Aphex Twin than alternative rock. The band then recorded the
Pure, Impure EP, which increased the distance from most rock acts, and acknowledged the gap with the addition of two
Aphex Twin remixes.
In 1993,
Seefeel released their debut album
Quique, an even colder document of ambient indie techno than the previous EPs had predicted. The album was hailed -- mostly in rock circles -- as a techno album which indie kids could listen to, and it received an American release that same year on the dance label Astralwerks. During 1994, Astralwerks compiled the two early EPs as
Polyfusia, and
Seefeel made the leap from rock to techno via a contract with the British electronic label Warp Records. The group played with techno acts
Autechre and
µ-Ziq, and released the
Starethrough EP -- their most electronic work yet -- later that year.
The resulting album, 1995's
Succour, was something of a disappointment; similar to
Aphex Twin's supposed major-label breakthrough one year earlier, the LP was a bit too skeletal for most rock critics or music fans. It failed to earn a stateside release and caused the temporary breakup of the group in 1996, when
Mark Clifford's
Disjecta project became his main occupation (with a style more oriented to experimental audiences).
Peacock,
Fletcher, and
Seymour in turn joined
Mark Van Hoen (aka
Locust) for an EP and album of indie/trip-hop recorded as
Scala. Though
Seefeel returned in late 1996 with their third proper LP,
Ch-Vox, the group took an open-ended hiatus after its release.
Peacock and
Seymour continued to record as
Scala, while
Clifford recorded an EP for Warp as
Woodenspoon and later surfaced as
Sneakster.
In 2010, almost fifteen years after their last new recording,
Seefeel reunited to play at Warp's 20th-anniversary celebration, and a new lineup coalesced around
Clifford and
Peacock plus bassist/DJ Shigeru Ishihara and drummer Iida Kazuhisa aka EDA (the latter from the Boredoms). An EP followed later that year, and the studio album
Seefeel was released on Warp in early 2011.
–
John Bush, Rovi