Seefeel announce an extensive reissue campaign encompassing their mid-90s work for the Warp and Rephlex labels, including expanded reissues of the out-of-print studio albums Succour and (Ch-Vox), an EPs collection St / Fr / Sp, and a 4CD 94 - 96 anthology, Rupt & Flex.
All of the albums contain unreleased bonus material, mastered from original DAT transfers by Stefan Betke aka Pole. Each release comes with brand new (or in the case of Succour, updated) artwork by The Designers Republic, with liner notes by Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock of Seefeel.
Seefeel signed to Warp in 1994 off the back of a well received debut album on Too Pure. They were originally associated in the music press with the shoegaze sound of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive, but their electronic tendencies and use of samplers led to them also being linked to the emerging IDM sound, reinforced when Aphex Twin (a big Seefeel fan) did two different remixes of early track “Time To Find Me” for free, on the agreement that they would make a record for his Rephlex label at some point.
Steve Beckett signed them to Warp off the back of first album Quique and commented in an interview: "Seefeel were the first band that Warp signed who had guitars...they were brave to sign to us because they became the 'older siblings' in the family and took all the flak by breaking the unwritten rules of an (up until then) purely dance label".
Having heard Seefeel's first EP, Robin Guthrie invited Mark Clifford to the Cocteau Twins' studio and, soon after, Seefeel to tour with the band. Mark would later remix 4 tracks (comprising the Otherness EP) for the Cocteau Twins, taking their music to a new audience.
The second Seefeel album Succour came out on Warp in March 1995 and moved away from the more melodic and guitar-led sound of their first album, exploring more rhythmic and quasi-industrial textures, trailed by two EPs from the previous year, Starethrough and Fracture/Tied. The 6-track (Ch-Vox) mini-album followed in 1996 on Rephlex and showcased even more of an experimental direction, mostly made by Mark Clifford on his own, and presaging the records he would make for Warp under the names Woodenspoon and Disjecta.
At the time these records were released, they suffered commercially from not really fitting into any one scene, pre-dating the genre-hopping influences that are commonplace in a world of artists that have grown up with the internet. The Rupt & Flex music sits at a unique crossroads between post-rock, classic Warp IDM, dreampop and industrial music, and despite this eclectic drift, is cohesive in execution and instantly recognisable as Seefeel.
The band went on hiatus in 1997 but made another self-titled album for Warp in 2010, after a live performance at Warp20 the previous year (with a new line-up featuring DJ Scotch Egg and ex-Boredoms drummer Kazuhisa Iida) impressed Steve Beckett. Mark Clifford has also collaborated extensively with Mira Calix and recorded for Editions Mego amongst other labels.