Nothing ever ends in a Seefeel song. There is no end result—only a snapshot of an experiment in progress, a process in motion. Some sound like they're going for a long time – the glacial, galactic rhythm. We might hear a useless guitar part, a misleading drum, a lonely voice from the voice of Sarah Peacock. A tremendous bass pulse at the center of gravity. All these pieces of shrapnel hang in test constellations. they get carried away. The forces at work are hidden from the ear: the methods arcane, the process inscrutable. The form of a particular song is like a snapshot of the expanding universe at an arbitrary point in its evolution, a microcosm of infinity.
Over the years, the UK band – currently the duo of Peacock and producer/multi-instrumentalist Mark Clifford – have offered clues to the nature, if not the causes, of their cosmological dub. 1995's 'Utreat', the loneliest and most minimalist thing Seefeel had produced, stretched out like a bridge from the latter side of Help for opening next year (Ch-vox)where it appeared in an even more stripped-down form as “Utreat (Complete).” Three years ago, the box set Rupt and Flex (1994-96) unpacked the overlapping sessions for both albums, bringing together several versions that threw familiar forms off their familiar trajectories. A part of the drum may fall into the foreground or be swallowed into the distance. a smudge of old comments can bring new shapes against the black. At times, the band seemed to just play with the playback speed – slow, slower, slower – and coax new frequencies from the tape with each pass.
Square roots offers the clearest picture yet—well, except the photos are almost unimaginable—of the group's weird, remixed philosophy. All seven tracks stem from the same material they performed last August All squarewhich was Seefeel's first new album in 13 years. There were six tracks there, and although the new record is about half a minute shorter, there are seven here – a small detail that I think says something about the way Seefeel's sounds mutate and multiply, like bacteria in a petri dish .
Like All square, Square roots it's about 50 percent smudge, 50 percent shine. Boring drum and bass beats set the frame. Everything else is some abstract guitar derivative and wordless voice, both stretched and smeared and dubbed beyond recognition. Guitars sound less like guitars than freight train whistles, a cool breeze, a winter sunrise. Peacock's voice sounds less like a song than a heavenly sigh. It is impossible to describe with certainty the relationship between the earlier pieces and these new ones: Are these rough drafts or later versions? Alternate shots or actual glimpses of alternate dimensions?
