Seefeel used to be smooth. In the 1990s, they ably blended rave's currents of sound with shoegaze's tempos and wash. At their best they were light and bliss-y without feeling insubstantial, providing excellent fodder for remixes. Writing for Melody Maker in 1993, Simon Reynolds cleverly called them "womb-adelic." The Faults EP is Seefeel's first recording since 1996, with principals Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock convening with Shigeru Ishihara and Iida Kazuhisa, a former Boredoms drummer. Most notably, it's not very smooth: rather than gracelessly grasping at their old sound, Seefeel have taken a stab at something new. It's an unexpected, difficult path that has yielded unexpected, difficult music.
If Clifford and Peacock still have theirs ears tied to British electronic music-- it seems likely they do-- then a new direction makes perfect sense, as UK techno has changed immeasurably in the last 15 years. Faults at times approximates the blocky, ornate musicality of Britain's promising post-dubstep scene: Darkstar, Untold, and Mount Kimbie come to mind. The similarities are not necessarily born of execution-- Faults doesn't sound exactly like those young artists-- but in the way Seefeel use sound: piecing it together, stacking it. Where previous Seefeel recordings often sounded like purees of their source elements, Faults finds the band pre-blend.
You can chalk some of the difference up to the new personnel. Kazuhisa paces the band with choppy, concentrated drumming; gone are the whirring palpitations of the younger Seefeel. On the title track, everything comes together: ghostly, pitch-shifted vocals balance on the crevasses between bass drum kicks as the song builds to a chalky, sour anti-climax. It is charmingly indecisive and unpredictable, as the song feels like it could develop in many ways but instead just teeters on its axis. The remaining three songs are cut from similar sonic cloth but don't feel as restless. They are too content to let keyboard noise sink into drum patterns or to knob-twiddle into knots.
Still, Faults feels like a band working on something. They seem creative, full of new blood and old friendships. Faults is airy and tactile, its failures full of queasy keyboards and structural percussion. In an era that has seen dozens of 1990s bands reunite, Seefeel have done so under the impression not that their old material is relevant and worthwhile (though it is), but rather that their new material might be. More, please.
