An interview with Sarah Peacok (Seefeel) by Wilder Gonzales Agreda from July 2021. Reprinted with permission (Vanguardia Peruana).
Hyper-modulated guitars, dreamy rhythms, and alien voices
There are bands and artists that I will always thank my lucky star for having met and enjoyed in the prime of youth and in real time, to make matters worse, when no one gave a penny for ethereal transgression, shoegaze or avant electronica. Having achieved it located in Peru, in North Lima, has been one more gallon you would say. As I have already pointed out, perhaps this is due to the little space to marketing that at that time flooded the cones/suburbs. In such a way it was natural that the Beck’s, Radiohead’s, Cerati’s, Oasis’ and other barrabasada of the pack repelled me.
Post-Rock was a multifaceted current that gave birth to the transgressors of the 90’s. Of that first wave, Seefeel was certainly a standard bearer. Their mix of hyper-modulated guitars, dreamy rhythms, and alien voices made them the perfect connection between the madmen of IDM and the neo-psychedelics of shoegaze. Aphex Twin remixed one of their first compositions, “Time to find me,” and they did the same with Cocteau Twins circa 1995 on the divine Otherness EP.
Over 25 years have passed, and the Seefeel sound remains pure. 30 more years will pass and, I swear, we will see how the real ones lasted; namely Main, Seefeel, Pram, Labradford, Insides et al. They really were the last vanguard that deserved the post-rockers stigma and not those scam avatars of indie rock progressives with effects.
One of the muses of the 90s is Sarah Peacock of Seefeel.
Wilder Gonzales Agreda :: How are you bearing with these days of pandemic chaos?
Sarah Peacock :: I’m okay, thanks! Luckily my family and friends have not been too badly affected. It has been hard but bearable so far but I’m apprehensive of the next stage.
How did or who had the idea of coming up with this neologism Seefeel?
Mark named the band from the lyrics of an early demo song (See, feel, touch) and said if I could think of anything better we would change it. I couldn’t, so it stuck.
Your opinion regarding the process of gentrification and retromania that we live in the culture from which music does not escape.
As regards my own personal taste I don’t mind retromania—there’s so much of the past to discover, and I often find I love new music that references the past in a refreshing way. Of course I admire innovation too, and that’s absolutely something we aspire to in our work as Seefeel. Gentrification angers me somewhat—it is important for the arts to represent everybody and there is definitely a worrying trend of exclusion of some socioeconomic groups in culture and media which, having opened up from the 60’s to early 2000’s has got much worse. It is so hard now for anyone to start a career without connections and family support, access to higher education etc.
What memories from the days on Too Pure, which at the time was for some, including myself, the UK bomb label, and how did you get to Warp as a band that used guitars?
Too Pure were an awesome label to be involved with, I think we’re guilty of not giving them enough credit sometimes. They invited us to their Xmas party in 1992, and towards the end of the night Richard Roberts pulled me aside and said “Did you enjoy tonight? You’re a part of this now!” which was the first time I realised they wanted to sign us. I was so thrilled I could hardly sleep that night! Steve and Rob from Warp came to see us play in Manchester when we supported Chapterhouse, they were another label we loved so we were flattered that they liked us.
What do you do for a living? Does avant-indie music pay the bills?
It doesn’t! I’ve always had to claim welfare benefits or do a day job. Since 1999 I’ve worked at famous London venue the Scala, doing admin.
A list of the records, books or movies that have burst your neurons or those that you treasure the most.
I could list so much here but I will try to keep to a ‘rule of three’—I love comedy, sci-fi and dystopian fiction; all-time favorite films are Brazil, Spinal Tap, The Big Lebowski; TV Star Trek, Better Call Saul, Chernobyl; books Catch-22, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, JG Ballard; records. I still adore Loveless, Daydream Nation and Frequencies.
In Jeanette Leech’s book, Fearless, she tells about your time in Russia where you played at an event sponsored by the local mafia. What other anecdotes do you remember or could you share with our blog readers?
We had some great adventures on tour supporting Cocteau Twins in spring 1994—at the last minute we managed to get a driver, Jan with a van (the boyfriend of one of the tour’s catering staff) who agreed to be paid with the fees from two hastily arranged gigs to be played after the tour. His van broke down as we drove through Belgium, we spent a morning hanging around in the little town of Bastogne as he arranged a repair. Then we were worried the same would happen as we ascended the alps so we all got out and let Jan drive up the steepest road, worried we might be stranded in the snow! Then we were stopped and searched by border guards going from Switzerland into Italy, where Jan (who, by some incredibly lucky twist of fate was fluent in Italian) managed to concoct a believable story explaining why the drug-sniffer dogs were going crazy and it definitely wasn’t because we had been smoking weed all the way from London. They opened the back of the van, and seeing it stacked to the roof like Tetris, decided not to empty and search it. If they had, we might have gone to jail!
Robin Guthrie or Kevin Shields?
Argh, that’s too hard, I don’t want to answer that! I love them both!
How do you think the music industry will evolve and what new groups would you like to recommend?
I feel very out of touch because I usually listen to music in the office, where I haven’t been since March 2020, so I don’t feel I can make any recommendations. I don’t like Spotify but I use Apple Music which is just as bad, and I love to baffle an algorithm—I grew up listening to John Peel who would genre-hop and saw his duty as to challenge listeners with things they would never choose themselves. Since the power has been taken from major record companies (good!) into major tech companies (bad!) the evolution continues.
Do you know bands from Latin America or from other areas outside the USA and Europe?
Again, I’m very very uninformed. I think I only know those that have entered fairly mainstream consciousness, or worked in the US and Europe—Arca, Juana Molina. I welcome any suggestions of good stuff I should have heard of.
Have you thought about the possibility of publishing a Best Of or perhaps a live album? In the 90s, several Seefeel bootlegs circulated on the mailing lists, I remember clearly.
I don’t think we would do a Best Of, it’s worked well for us doing redux releases with bonus tracks, and I’m not sure we’d ever agree on a track listing! A live album is a good idea, we’ve sort of done that with Sp/Ga, maybe we’ll do more once live music is viable again.
Seefeel are a British electronic and post-rock band formed in the early 1990s by Mark Clifford (guitar, programming), Daren Seymour (bass), Justin Fletcher (drums, programming), and Sarah Peacock (vocals, guitar). Their work became known for fusing guitar-based shoegaze with the production techniques of ambient techno and electronica. ~Wikipedia
Visit Seefeel at seefeel.warp.net.
Rapture To Rupt by Seefeel x KMRU is available on Warp. [Bandcamp]
