Seefeel - Dream Journeys and Other Confluences

“All through the night I am a motionless body, and on the other side of town a roll of paper is turning into the morning newspaper, and at eight-forty I will go out and at eight-twenty the newspaper will have arrived at the kiosk on the corner, and at eight-forty-five my hand and the newspaper will meet and begin to move together through the air, a metre off the ground, on their way to the tram stop…”

Horacio Oliveira and metaphysics

In the posh London of the early Nineties there moved a somewhat introverted, dreamy young man, one of those rarely seen out making a racket with his peers, who preferred the solitude of his bedroom, books and a musical instrument as confidants, to Chelsea matches. It might sound like the introduction to the profile of yet another troubadour, were it not that this story thankfully heads in another direction: Mark Clifford's path is in fact one of research, of obsessive study into the potential of his instrument and the expressive possibilities bound up with it.

Never satisfied and never self-indulgent, Clifford spent a long time exploring the solutions that electronics applied to the six-string guitar could offer, delving like a true devotee into loop systems, sequencers and manipulations of the instrument's sound. At the same time, he held firmly in mind his own idea of a musical product that went beyond song form, while still keeping its warm, instinctive approach — a deeply personal space of his own, one whose realisation nonetheless required expanding the all-too-narrow confines of the home studio into a full band project.

Seefeel: psychedelic polyfusions

The first stirrings of a band as far from ordinary as Seefeel actually followed a fairly routine path: between 1991 and 1992 Clifford spent several months putting up ads and auditioning musicians, some of them remarkably gifted and skilled. Sharing in these early adventures was his eccentric friend and bassist Mark van Hoen, who would in fact only pass through the band's ranks for a few months, as a kind of trial run for his future solo projects, but who would nonetheless remain behind the scenes of the band, becoming an indispensable point of reference.

Fate, or perhaps the inspiration of the moment, finally led the choice of musicians to recruit to fall on young singer and guitarist Sarah Peacock, Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine in her walkman, on percussionist Justin Fletcher and on bassist Daren Seymour, a deep connoisseur of kraut-rock and psychedelia, who would step in for van Hoen.

Even before being reliable, skilled musicians, these were people with whom Clifford felt a kind of personal and intellectual affinity, a factor of enormous importance in reaching the goals he had set, which above all required a shared sense of purpose and "vision".

From here to the first demos and first live shows (almost always critical and commercial flops) and on to signing a record deal, the step is unusually short, and by the end of 1992 it's already time to think about a first EP. In the ideal manifesto of Clifford and co., the essential rule is to disintegrate the traditional song form and work only with the fragments left behind, tearing down anything that might be felt as an aesthetic limitation on their concept of psychedelia, on the intuition and instinct that are the hinge of every one of their recordings. Filters, delay and sampling, treated as mere decorative frills in traditional pop-rock, become the vital flame of the material itself.

The first extended-play, More Like Space, duly came out in 1993 on Too Pure, immediately throwing the specialist critics into crisis, unable as they were to pin an appropriate label on it: dub? post-rock? noise? ambient? Few grasped the brilliant novelty of the Seefeel formula, a hybrid substance gathering up a good number of codified genres (the vast physical and mental spaces of dub, the reiterations of psychedelia and techno, the dreamlike "experiences" of post-rock and even of ethereal 4AD), constantly stirred into a fluctuating, shifting mush in which all the elements remain clearly distinguishable, yet somehow only make sense through their continuous coexistence and fusion.

Among the EP's four tracks, standouts include the splendid title track, the first of the band's many masterpieces, thick with delay and just a few crystal-clear vocals from Peacock; the more driving rhythm of "Time To Find Me", traceable to a certain ambient strand of trip-hop; and the instrumental "Blue Easy Sleep", co-written by Clifford and his friend van Hoen.

Everything, in short, is set for the masterpiece, which - more than ever in this case - is literally just around the corner.

Only a few months pass, then, before Seefeel deliver their debut album, Quique, a record that for depth and clarity of purpose already carries all the hallmarks of a mature, complete work, as well as a strongly innovative one. The nine tracks of Quique fall within a techno-ambient trapped in mid-air, which on one hand looks up toward the arctic sun of Aphex Twin and u-Ziq, and on the other is magnetically drawn back down to earth by sinuous, irremediably physical dub movements. The tracks thus proceed in balance between these two poles, at times emphasizing the disembodied, "airborne" component (listen to "Imperial" and "Through You"), elsewhere the genuine, if dreamy and sluggish, groove (the sturdy stride of "Polyfusione" and the dream-dub of "Filter Dub", a foretaste of the formula explored a few years later by Massive Attack).

Though it found a happy, fortunate refuge in electronics, Seefeel's experience was nonetheless born within "rock" circles, within the shoegaze current and above all within psychedelia - both the roots variety and the updated kind practiced by Spaceman 3: the tracks on Quique thus almost always build around a looped guitar riff, over which every other element gradually enters, continually shifting in color and speed, often slipping past the listener's attention. Sarah Peacock's vocalizing is, finally, the added value: ethereal and devoid of fixed meaning, it pays homage on more than one occasion to Liz Fraser's Cocteau Twins, as in the splendid, impalpable warbling of "Charlotte's Mouth".

Quique is a complex, layered piece of work, thriving on constant confluences and fusions, forever caught in the act of becoming. For this reason too, it rightfully ranks among the most original and significant works of its generation.

As expected, Quique was not exactly a commercial success (selling barely fifteen thousand copies), but it set off an underground cult of growing scope that would only bear fruit many years later, thanks above all to the vast resources and boundless archives of the file-sharing era.

Mark Clifford did, however, receive some significant praise, above all from Robin Guthrie, who called on him in 1995 for the remix collection "Otherness". A kind of collaboration began between them, once again marked by the Sneakster experience.

Also in 1995, after a long stretch of live activity, came the band's second studio work. Where Quique had been an airy, sun-drenched work, with Succour the group's formula seems trapped inside some grey nebula that suspends everything within dense layers of haze. The record exhibits a more skeletal, dried-out sound right from the start, beginning with the dark drone of "Meol". The guitars, though captured in a more "live", less effects-laden way than on Quique, retreat into the background, leaving center stage to sparse, unpredictable rhythm sections and an ambient quality that verges on isolationist territory.

Succour is an entirely abstract, cerebral experience: schizophrenias pulsing in the manner of Autechre ("Fracture"), hypnotic beats preserving unrecognizable shreds of dub ("Gatha", "Rupt"), techno-like claustrophobia ("Vex"), and above all meticulous work on harmonics, which accounts for the record's few melodic openings.

Peacock's vocals, too, have all but vanished, resurfacing only compressed and in scattered fragments on "Ruby-Ha" and "Rupt".

Succour, in short, moves Seefeel away from those traditionally rock-oriented circles to which their early recordings could still loosely be linked, placing them instead in a kind of limbo between typical Warp productions (unsurprisingly the label that would release the record) and the moods of Bristol trip-hop. The album's gestation, however, brought the band's internal tensions into even sharper relief, as the project grew ever more Clifford-centric, while Fletcher and Peacock developed artistic ideas of their own that didn't always align with the leader's direction - to the point of making it difficult to carry on with the project's instinctive, visionary attitude.

By the time (Ch-Vox) was delivered, at the end of 1996, the band had practically already split up. It's a collection of six tracks, running just over half an hour in total, which follows the atmospheric path set by Succour, though abandoning rhythmic drive in favor of ambient flows often built around a single loop ("Ashdecon") or digital beats ("Hive"), almost always wrapped in a deeply "dark" aura that culminates in the murky close of "Net".

By the time (Ch-Vox) came out, the band's members had already scattered across a number of parallel projects and experiments, freezing Seefeel for many years to come among the legendary names of Nineties underground music. A full fifteen years would pass before the much-talked-about comeback.

Seefeel, resurfacing in a cybernetic 2011, are by now a cult underground name, and the self-titled comeback album is greeted with great anticipation on many fronts, building around the band a more than modest level of hype. Alongside Clifford, Sarah Peacock has returned, while the real novelties are Shigeru Ishihara and E-Da on bass and drums, who contribute to the band's notable shift in direction, unleashing a rougher, more vigorous sound.

Seefeel surprises with its ideas and impact. It's a raw, primordial electronic sound that reclaims dub and glitch, elevates them to load-bearing pillars, and weaves them together with icy urban simmering, occasional trip-hop, and a sense of freshness that surrounds and strikes. Between dreamy reminiscences set like rough diamonds ("Faults") and Autechre reappearing in their most basic form ("Gzaug"), the band plays its hand in a game that heads straight for the unexpected. Electronic rawness is counterbalanced at times by soft ambient streams in a very distant background, at others by lukewarm, evanescent siren songs.

Besides being fine musicians, Seefeel also prove to be up to date on trends, offering a highly distinctive take on them: "Making" reclaims chillwave primitivism, retracing its key features, but plunging the sweet lullabies à la Washed Out into acid. The Bristol beat at the close does the rest.

There's no room for sentimentality of any kind here: Seefeel is a metallic raga painting a picture of rawness and icy environments, yet never forgetting to point out the existence of its opposite, a warmth perhaps hidden but nonetheless present.

Rarely has a comeback been more successful and fortunate than this one.

It takes another thirteen years of silence to arrive at Everything Squared. It must be said right away that the album's twenty-five-odd minutes, despite the brief runtime, amply repay the wait. Without registering any particular shocks or changes of direction, Seefeel prove they're still up to the task, transposing their original code into a perfectly updated form.

There's greater care in how the parts interlock, and the production is more polished, offering a clarity and depth of sound never so evident before.

It's essentially Clifford calling the shots, with Peacock – always easy to compare to Elizabeth Fraser for her ethereal delivery devoid of lexical meaning – relegated mostly to providing vocal input (essential in the opening pair "Sky Hooks" – "Multifolds"), and Ishihara contributing his extremely deep bass on two of the six tracks. Amid shimmering synths, catchy loops, and rhythmic fragmentations, synthetic nebulae take shape, akin to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II ("Lose The Minus"), rough ambient-techno textures in the Autechre vein ("Antiskeptic"), and measured ambient-dub chasms streaked with soft darkness ("End Of Here").

Captivating in every one of its forms, the detailed sound flow, with its shifting shades, offers itself as an all-encompassing sensory trajectory, able to dance flexibly between what is real and pure imagination. After more than thirty years, Seefeel are still necessary.

2024 then brings us Squared Roots, a further, brief piece of the puzzle — not a fully standalone release, but a collection of seven tracks drawn from the same recording sessions, to be considered a sort of expansion of the excellent album that preceded it. Aided behind the mixing desk by Simon Scott of Slowdive, Mark Clifford pushes what is by now essentially his own creature – though still co-credited to Sarah Peacock – toward ambient-dub horizons already partly present on Everything Squared.

Here the pulses slow down and grow deeper, the sound dilutes as it flows smoothly, absorbing melodic phrases from the tracks on the EP released earlier that year. Every rough edge is smoothed over, the hypnotic drive is heightened, and the vocal component is given less space. The ambient-techno references disappear in favor of nebulous forms verging on the impalpable, only occasionally crossed by rough intersections ("Nerve Chasms").

While maintaining a clear link, the record doesn't sound like a mere reshaping of previous material; instead it offers a different perspective, hinting at how those forms might have evolved to reach landscapes that are kindred yet profoundly different. Certainly less defined, but still compelling.

Sol.Hz from 2026 marks Seefeel's return after fifteen years with a work steeped in dense, suffocating ambient dub, dominated by deep bass and an increasingly abrasive percussive presence. Fragmented rhythms underpin an interplay of synthesizers, guitars, and vocal echoes, in an unstable balance between shoegaze and IDM suggestions, where the voice often withdraws to make room for the sonic matter. More than on melody, the album relies on hypnotic, layered atmospheres, striking a subtle balance between physicality and abstraction. In this dark, watery landscape, "Falling First" stands out as a rare, almost suspended burst of light.

Sneakster: melodic intoxication

Sophie Hinkley and Mark Clifford met at a London venue called Milk Bar, and from there began writing material together. Their first EP ("Fifty Fifty") came out on Bella Union, and that same year (1999) also saw the release of their debut, Pseudo-Nouveau. Should the time ever come to unearth trip-hop's hidden masterpieces, this album will rightfully hold a special place on that list. Crafted by skilled hands, perfectly balanced between melodies and rhythms, darkness and vocal brightness, the record is a perfect compendium of everything that the genre made famous by the much-lauded Portishead has been and will be.

Clifford's electronic background is plain to see, and the rhythms are built with monstrous technical skill - every sound is placed exactly where it should be, and every track, whether instrumental or sung, exudes sensuality and strength. Hinkley, perfectly at ease navigating the electronic swells, shows off a sinuous voice and real versatility, shifting between different vocal registers across an album that's certainly no easy listen. Thanks to her songwriting collaboration with Clifford, the result is a fully successful artistic symbiosis.

The record kicks off in style with "Whileaway". The metallic beat that opens the track is jagged and disorienting; only once the hammering, industrial-tinged rhythm kicks in do you realize the album has actually begun. Her voice is a pure, warm vocal, never overdone, a mix of interpretive skill and stirring passion. The high-quality sonic exploration lays bare boundless potential, with percussive inserts focusing attention on a sordid, mysterious impact, crafting a haunting nocturnal chant that stretches on for almost six minutes.

Along the same lines come the equally rarefied "Firehearts" (with an enchanting crossing of drone and analog synths) and "Splinters" (ambient-pop corrupted by a rotten, wrecked backbone rhythm), paving the way for Clifford's ambient experiments (his true trademark). "Full Echoes", with a synthetic organ later joined by angelic guitar notes and a creaking beat of pure minimal-techno pedigree, is a dirge of real impact; the industrial-leaning rhythms of "Stolen Letter" and the brief ambient interlude "Trust & Blush" are further proof of a form that would never be repeated.

The organ comes back to wound in "Static", with textbook melodic progressions, leaving "Heavy Heat, Heavy Time" to lean into the record's more rhythmic side, while the closing "Sweet Melody" lines up all the album's key traits with its usual slow, suffocating pace.

In 2000 a version of the album was released with the addition of the tracks from "Fifty-Fifty", including two remixes courtesy of none other than Robin Guthrie. The mastermind behind Cocteau Twins reworks "Fireheart" and "Stolen Letter" in his own style, emphasizing the grace of the female voice with shimmering guitar chords. The previously unreleased "Kinda Blue" combines classic sobs (cello) with hammering interlocking parts, matching the quality of the album's best moments.

The duo's venture ended prematurely after just one album, and Hinkley vanished from the music scene with lightning speed. Over the years Clifford would resurface with a handful of sparse releases, before surprisingly returning with Seefeel after fifteen years.

The total obscurity that befell Pseudo-Nouveau after its release shows how luck is often a crucial factor in taking that extra step toward public recognition. Talking about it now may not be enough to rehabilitate it, but the sheer quality of these songs is something every music fan should reckon with.

Scala: trip-hop acridity

Among the more interesting side projects, Scala was made up entirely of former Seefeel members. Taking the parent group's technical flair for melody and rhythm as a starting point, the band managed to release some of the finest examples of trip-hop, both in terms of originality and sheer effectiveness. Never fully faithful to the genre's low, loping beat, they offered an acidic, sulphurous, mystical take on the Bristol sound. If you want to slap a label on it, call it acid-trip-hop. With the wonderful voice of Sarah Peacock out front, Scala's music is rooted in a leaden atmosphere, where tight rhythms and harsh melodies are the perfect backdrop for songs that brush up against explosion without ever quite detonating.

Scala's story was a short one: their output was limited to the two years between '96 and '98, though in that span they released quite a lot. It starts with Beauty Nowhere, a nine-track album and a magnificent leftover from the trip-hop saga in a noir key. Perfectly calibrated to a low-key register, the record towers over its peers by manipulating ambient, trip-hop and electronic music in general. You can sense pioneering figures behind it, superb sound craftsmen with an uncommon sensitivity. The bleak, gaunt tones are a perfect calling card for fans of the unconventional (the opening "Naked", the frenzied build of "Torn"), while the more relaxed, calmer moments recall ambient-pop solutions of absolute quality (the magic of "Hold Me Down", the noise particles in "Ride Me").

The instrumentals, meanwhile, bring to mind the miracles of Quique. Among them, it's worth remembering the disjointed rhythms of "Something About Brigitte Nielsen" and the angelic flashes of dream-pop vocalizing in "Think In Japanese".

Overall it's an extremely strong debut, able to forge an original and decidedly compelling formula. The ability to break away from the obvious, after the previous experiences of more celebrated artists, is admirable, as is the pop appeal of a track like "Heart Of Glass".

That same year saw the release of the EP Lips & Heaven, which further expands the range of possibilities, pushing the voice to the forefront in some of the most disparate contexts: "VDT", with its earthy, threadbare sound, corrupts the sweetness of the female voice, while "Pain & Pleasure" pairs the usual beat with wafts of harp, achieving a result that's seductive if not downright bizarre. With "Tears", and especially "Tryptic", the band partially softens its sound with a few melodic concessions.

Two years later came the pairing of To You In Alpha-Compass Heart, swan song and conclusion of a venture that was fruitless in terms of sales but no less deserving of belated attention. These two albums contain songs that are simply beautiful and effective, with an unexpected pop sensibility. Original tracks, miraculously able to combine the Seefeel members' background with the trip-hop current. It's hard to find the words to describe the magic of "Honeylike" - bastard, melancholy pop - to make sense of the nastiness of the industrial beat in "Remember How To Breathe" or "Slide", or to put into words the emotions stirred by instrumentals like "Spread Your Wings And Fly" or "Broken Dawn Beauty".

While To You In Alpha occasionally injects rock elements ("Colt", "Wires"), or chooses to flirt with lounge-pop (the entertaining "Black Narrow Shut"), Compass Heart grows more rarefied, intangible, dusty. Indeed, tracks like "Ride On" - stellar noise-pop - "Fearsome" and "Fuser" rest their foundations on faint synthetic rhythms or a barely recognizable guitar line, unwittingly playing with the pop minimalism of Stereolab. Only "Words And Thoughts" lets Sarah Peacock's voice shine through beneath the hammering march of a monolithic drum machine.

The best way to fully enjoy these two albums is to listen to them back to back, without interruption, preferably on shuffle. The constant blending will deepen the sense of immersion in a special, catatonic world, as capable of swallowing us whole as it is of making us fall in love. Before long, Scala's music would vanish from view with the temporary dissolution of Seefeel, leaving behind a precious legacy and the regret of never seeing the continuation of a sound as singular as it was lost.

January: pop effusions

Sarah Peacock, a versatile artist with a strong melodic instinct, in addition to her time in the aforementioned Scala, also founded and released two albums with the band January. Together with Jonny Mathers, Jonny Wood and Simon McLean (producer of Scala's To You In Alpha), the group devoted itself, with fruitful results, to a psychedelic pop-rock with an atmospheric, enveloping appeal. Without reaching the heights of the bands orbiting the Seefeel galaxy, I Heard Myself In You and Motion Sickness offer delicate music, deeply marked by an underlying melancholy born of the years in which it was released (almost immediately after the September 11 attacks) and by songwriting that, while not miraculous, is far from ordinary, often lifted by genuinely striking surges.

The first album, released in 2001, contains a few bittersweet gems, steeped in a hazy, never intrusive psychedelia, drowsy but never static. Acid-etched guitars are the salt of this record, starting with the opening "All Time" and continuing through other understated episodes like "Contact Light", the title track and the delicate "Invisible Lines".

The acoustic shoegaze of "Sequence Start" is further proof of the ferment within a band that nonetheless never fully manages to translate it into truly convincing music. A few good songs surrounded by a handful of uncertainties: a singer not quite up to the task, too little nerve to lean into the rhythmic, noisy side, and an indecisiveness over which aspect — noise-rock or dream-rock? — should ultimately take centre stage.

On Motion Sickness things go much better, thanks to a few key details and a sharper, more effective and functional production. The opening "Paul O Reilly" boasts a magnificent dialogue between drums and guitar, while "Someone" revisits territory somewhere between sung post-rock and psychedelia, but with a pronounced emphasis on shimmering guitar flourishes, coming across as fluid and inspired. This trend holds up across much of the album, which is admirably balanced between liquid chords and a more convincing vocal performance, as shown on the touching "Caught" or in the full-bodied progressions of the title track.

On this record even the interludes manage to enchant: the lapping of the sea framed by xylophone and barely-brushed guitar on "The Square Is Closing" paints a Zen tableau impossible to ignore. With the addition of the long, finally tart "Sandwood" and a closing chord-and-voice rendition of Yoko Ono's "Have You Seen A Horizon Lately", the album blooms into its full radiance with a truly moving closing triptych.

The impression one gets is that the band simply didn't have the time needed to develop its ideas with real impact. Indeed, shortly after the release of Motion Sickness, the four members disbanded the group, leaving behind just two merely decent albums and squandering plenty of potential and talent along the way.

Cliffordandcalix: immaculate scraps

Shortly before returning to Seefeel, Mark Clifford embarked on a collaboration with celebrated electronic artist Mira Calix. Curiosity about the outcome of such an unusual artistic pairing runs very high indeed.

Lost Foundling gathers various sessions recorded by the duo across a series of meetings over time, with the chronology indicated by the production year appended to each track's title. Despite the wide time span, the material holds together as a compact whole, free of jarring or incoherent detours. Both musicians' strengths are well blended into an album that offers a perfect mediation between melodic/rhythmic exploration and moments of ecstatic sonic candor, in which Calix's voice serves as the ideal counterpoint to the most disparate settings. The ever-present vocals help soften often thorny textures, while the alternation between stillness and chaos helps dilute the material all the way to the end.

In strictly technical terms, we're in the territory of ambient pop that throws glitch malfunctions, dreamy guitar work, ambient beds and noise into one great melting pot.

The variety of tones already mentioned allows for an alternation between unrecognisable vocal takes (the tangled sonic magma of "Someone Like Me" and "Dream Of You" wraps around Calix's voice, lending it edge) and delightful, seraphic watercolours (the splendid "You And I", the inextricable synth weave of "One 2 Far"). While Clifford's magic touch on guitar shows itself in full splendor (the psychedelia suspended in a void on "Beethaven", the mystical dream-pop of "He Promised It All", the metallic corrosion of "In Her Room"), rhythmic obsessions crop up here and there (the dark tribalism of "Myrie", the driving drum machine of "Pull It A Part 1"), along with brief snatches of sickly ambient ("Cket", "Mintle", "Alkaline") and more recognisable pop structures ("To Stay Changed Forever" carries a rare, tormented charm).

On this occasion, then, we're compelled to applaud the partnership behind Lost Foundling, since it sums up, with admirable compositional cunning, the two musicians' various influences. Considering this is merely a scattering of samples spread across ten years, it only heightens the curiosity to hear what a session of intensive composition might sound like.

That same year saw the release of a remix EP of tracks drawn from the original Lost Foundling. The artists involved shuffle the deck, delightfully transfiguring the sounds: Andrea Parker and Daz Quayle inject a foggy malignancy into "Beethaven", while Majestic 12 plays the card of playful minimalism with the same track. Luke Vibert plays the electro sorcerer with a gorgeous cybernetic flow on "One 2 Far", while Simon Pyke brushes on the greyest of fog, again on "Beethaven".

Woodenspoon – Disjecta: an Idm bender

At the height of the Warp-branded Idm explosion, Mark Clifford allowed himself a solo outing with two projects closely tied to the British label, leaving behind just a small Ep on his own imprint, Polyfusia Records.

Under the moniker Woodenspoon, Clifford explores the most extreme side of Idm, laying bare the hardcore soul of his personal take on electronic music. Both the title track of Souff Souff and "Friendly Aside" land like a stab of numbing bass, while "Dig Deep Bin" and "Jujasm" pile on even more sordid yet equally powerful dose. Nothing we hadn't already heard before, but a decisive step in the artistic maturation of a Mark Clifford on a sharp upward trajectory. For lovers of the Warp era, it's still a good listen.

Disjecta, besides being a noticeably more developed experience than its predecessor, leans into calmer, more relaxed tones, vaguely reminiscent of Seefeel.

Looking For Snags is a hazy record, vaguely dark, pessimistic and deeply nocturnal. There's no melody in the rhythms of "Here", while on "Dorming" the beats are so shredded they come across as a single gust of cutting wind. "K-Bop" plays with concrete-music tones to bizarre effect, while "Gyric" and the title track raise the pitch, pushing right to the edge of Woodenspoon's hardcore side.

The remaining tracks sail knowingly between delicate robotic lullabies (the gorgeous, thin xylophone of "Alum Chime") and frenzied bursts of madness (the supersonic speed of "Skeenie"). A fine example of how the Warp era amounted to something far more than its most celebrated names.

Clifford carries on his Disjecta journey with Clean Pit & Lid., and does so admirably, breaking free of the genre's clichés by injecting more elements into the mix: it moves from techno temptations (the lumbering gait of "Kracht") to hints of ambient (the miasmas of "Gammi" and "Conviction Hic").

The album does give way to a few less convincing episodes (the fairly unremarkable "Cheekchops", the unresolved "Are You An Echo?"), picking itself back up in places (the ambient-pop watercolor of "Pit") but with a somewhat hesitant, if not outright limping, approach.

Swamped by commitments to his main band, Clifford shelved the project for several years (almost ten) before reviving it in 2003 with a self-titled Ep.

Disjecta Ep is a complete departure from its predecessors: starting with "True_Love By Normal", you can hear glitch influences and a strong urge to experiment with far less structured tones than the Idm of his early days. Guitar drones act as the glue binding four atmospheric, deeply convoluted tracks that never fully resolve into a clear melodic direction. "Flos" reveals markedly minimalist influences, built as it is from nothing but processed guitar notes and a few faint delays, all knowingly woven together by that great pioneer of sonic assemblage that is Clifford. Fully immersed in a sonic exploration akin to certain Mille Plateaux productions, he rounds out the Ep with two more tracks ("Lumina_Lamina" and "Feeding Buzz") that make subtraction their strong suit, sketching out exquisitely refined avant structures.

Simon Kealoha & Zavoloka: ambient detours

Over the years Clifford forged a few sporadic collaborations with leading names of the experimental electronic scene. In 2005 he released Running Taper together with Simon Kealoha, aka Calika, while in 2007 he put out a split with Ukrainian artist Zavoloka.

The record with Calika is a precious slice of ambient-glitch, with moments of the finest quality, never noisy and leaning toward the delicate. Paying homage to the tonal glitch experimentation tradition of the past decade, Clifford and Kealoha shine on tracks like "Forming Take" — dotted with shimmering sonic crumbs — "Extract:Taper______" and "February 02_02_1", where you can hear the kind of sound care only sonic-experimentation engineers possess.

Following the same blueprint as the project shared with Mira Calix, the four tracks of the split take a frontal approach with the guitar as the central instrument of the compositions. Surrounded by skillfully manipulated electronic tones, the strings are stretched out and dismembered into two delightful polychromatic carpets ("Blue-Fi 1", "Blue-Fi 2"). Zavoloka, true to her trademark style, grafts world-music themes (a flute) onto tangles of techno-glitch lattices with her usual ease, closing out the split with great style.

Even though they remain isolated cases, since these collaborations had no follow-up, these two small records have the merit of both revealing unexpected facets of Mark Clifford as musician and artist, and of reinforcing the man's thoroughly musical stature.

Contributions by Alberto Asquini (“Seefeel”), Peppe Trotta (“Everything Squared”, “Squared Roots”), Alessandro Giustiniano (“Sol.Hz)

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