3 posts tagged “shoegazer”

Not sparse enough to be ambient, too many live instruments for techno, too loopy for post rock, not loud enough to be shoegazer/dreampop...where exactly does Seefeel fit?

"Through You," from their first full-length, Quique, rides all of these genre lines pretty closely. There's plenty of guitar here, though it's all blurred and smeared and pushed way back in the mix, and it's pretty definitively non-rock guitar. There's a percussive element that could either be a heavily processed drum machine or drummer in a distant room. It builds slowly and steadily, but doesn't end much louder or more forceful than it began.

It's easy to see the lines of influence in retrospect, but sort of hard to see how they all wound up together. From the minimalism and pattern layering of 20th Century composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, to the insistent post-techno ryhthms of early Aphex Twin and, to the rich textures of everyone from Brian Eno to Kevin Shields, Seefeel was sort of a summation of a certain line of progress in the hitory of recorded music, where the focus was on feel, atmosphere, and tone rather than harmony, melody and rhythm. You can hear their own influence echoing today, rippling outward from the experimental territory they occupied, into deeper abstraction, and into more meditative rock/pop areas.

Hum is a misleading name for this band. More appropriate, perhaps, would be Crash! or Roar! or Fuzzzzzz!!! Their bombastic and fuzzed-out take on melodic, album-oriented rock fit right in with other ambitious bands of the time like the Smashing Pumpkins and Bends-era Radiohead, but never really got the same level of attention (the sole exception being their alt-rock radio hit, "Stars"). Still, they left behind a couple of essential albums (Downward is Heavenward and You'd Prefer An Astronaut)that are better than 90% of what their contemporaries put out.

"Apollo" finds them stripping away all the noise and texture and fury that typically defines their sound, and leaving the barest bones of a song behind. It's tender and cathartic in a way that guitar histrionics can't convey, with just the slightest dynamic build carried by the drumming. As the penultimate track on an album full of ascendant fuzz pedal anthems, "Apollo" demonstrates some well-placed variety and versatility for the Champaign, IL quartet.

The Sacramento three-piece Electro Group practically redefines the term "power trio" in live performance. Their completely fuzz-damaged take on indie pop features buzzsaw basslines, guitars that sound like several appliances malfunctioning at once, crash cymbals that wash over the entire mess, and vocals that barely peek out from behind the cacophony. Yet, somehow, they make it all sound pretty and, dare I say, catchy as well.

"Line of Sight" comes from their debut home-recorded full length, A New Pacifica, which was released by Sacramento-based Omnibus records in 2001. The band went on to release a couple of singles and a follow-up EP in recent years, but they seem to have disappeared into the wilds of Central California at some point.

Omnibus Records was home to several amazing bands for a while there, and had a hand in getting a few of today's prominent indie bands started. Mates of State released their first few 7" singles, as well as their debut album, My Solo Project, on Omnibus, and the band Flake Music also made their home there before turning into The Shins. There will be more songs from lesser known Omnibus bands posted here soon...