Quique is one of those albums that I find entirely impossible to categorise or even to sum up in words. Fourteen years on from its initial release it still sounds both out of time and timeless.Instruments and voices are muted and mutated to sound otherworldly, only the rhythms obtain solidity in order to flesh out the haunting dreamlike sounds of tracks like ‘Climatic Phase # 3’ where the deep, womblike dub bass underpins the airy guitars and keyboards. The songs build up upon layers as Seefeel add and remove textures, tones and refrains throughout the progress of each track. At times the drums, percussion and bass are dispensed with entirely. ‘Imperial’ recollects the euphoric rushes of early Acid House but liberated from the tyranny of the dance floor and 4/4 beat while closing track ‘Signals’ floats along uneasily, giving a glimpse of something vast, indescribable, even unknowable. Time is stretched and compressed while listening to Quique. The music is all slight shifts and tiny fluxes rather than radical changes or cathartic releases. Indeed a contemporary review suggested that listening to Quique was like constantly being at the point before orgasm. At times this can be soothing, at others deeply unsettling. ‘Polyfusion’ and ‘Industrious’ follow opener ‘Climatic Phase # 3’ with heavy, warm bass and clattering percussion, the former featuring Sarah Peacock’s haunting, disjointed vocals, the latter injecting a nice sense of urgency with its busy polyrhythms and percussion driven breaks.
The influence of dance music is apparent throughout Quique but it’s a record that is impossible to dance to. ‘Through You’ has an ominous, threatening feel with its odd percussion and deep low-end sound giving it a feel of narcoleptic Jungle as it slows to a barely audible heartbeat. ‘Charlotte’s Mouth’ is languid and full of contrasts, evoking disparate feelings of isolation and loss. ‘Plainsong’ and ‘Filter Dub’ are hauntingly beautiful, all ebb and flow, an underlying sense of unease like those dreams that you can only partially remember the next day but which unsettle you despite being impossible to recall, pin-down or fully recollect.
Quique remains a magnificent album today. The bonus disc of unreleased tracks and remixes is thoroughly worthwhile as a companion piece. ‘Clique’ is particularly excellent, with its heavenly vocal and strange undercurrents, it would sit well on Quique. Seefeel (along with bands such as A.R. Kane, Disco Inferno and Bark Psychosis) emerged at a point when British bands were moving beyond the confines of orthodox guitar pop, too early for what would become post-rock. They would go on to work with Aphex Twin and the Cocteau Twins and record for Warp but Quique remains, for me, and finest moment. It’s time to discover (or rediscover them) not as a historical document of the pre-Britpop era but as a beautiful album in its own right.