Everything Squared Review by
Andy Kellman
Everything Squared might seem tentative as a return. Seefeel's first set of new compositions in 13 years is well short of half an hour in duration, but leader Mark Clifford indicated that it's a drop in a constantly active ocean of sound; the EP is evidently more like a modest reintroduction. Excepting archival releases, Seefeel left off with a bristly and jagged self-titled album that suggested traversal of harsher terrain on the horizon. Instead, washes of static are rare here, and though ominous percussive judders fill fifth and last tracks "Hooked Paw" and "End of Here," this largely contemporizes the gentler aspects of the group's 1990s output. A link to the past is signaled from the start by Sarah Peacock's wordless, pacifying chirrups and Shigeru Ishihara's slow-motion dubwise bass. Some of these tracks themselves bear connections, like when the glimmering motif from particularly woozy second track "Multifolds" reappears in the crunching "Antiskeptic." Its sensations of euphoria faintly infected by those of alluring unease, Everything Squared is nearly as engrossing as anything from the group's past.
