Weekly MP3 #177: Seefeel - Dead Guitars

A weirdly jagged ambient dub number, heavy on the dread, and available from NME of all places.  Unique.

Another one from this year. Positively bleeding edge, but also possibly bleeding ears... Depending which way you turn your head it's a drifty ambient dub number or quite an intense, driving assault. That may sound weird, but on one level the track has a cruisy tempo and slow-developing structure, and on another the main riffage comes via weird squawking distortion and feedback. Not to mention the heavy drums and heavier-still bass guitar.  It ends with almost a minute of bass distortion.

UK band Seefeel were a strange half-way point between the shoegazers and the ambient nerds back in the early 90s.  Genuinely "post-rock" - as per what Simon Reynolds originally meant by the term, not just guitar bands playing anthemic instrumetnals.   A remix by Aphex Twin and releases on Warp & Rephlex solidified their affinity with the electronica wonks.

After a 14-year gap, the band reformed with members of the Boredoms involved.  They released an EP last year and followed up in January with a new, self-titled album.

Although I was excited by the fresh sound, I found an album's worth much more than I wanted to sit through. It sounds a bit like a series of jams or remixes using the same set of sounds / instruments / effects and the excitement wore thin. Then again, that might sum up my feelings about their "classic" releases too.