User:Andrzejbanas/Quique


 * Huffington Post: " the album was a stark departure from the guitar-based alternative music that dominated that period. It was the gateway drug to Autechre, Squarepusher and others how embraced electronic music without feeling like they had to make music for a rave."
 * Clifford states ""It was quite amusing to us at first because we felt like journalists were scrambling to find a box to put us in. It seemed like a strange game. But after a while I think it became a minor irritation because we weren't trying to fit into any one of their scenes and it felt a little like we were almost having convention thrust upon us when that was the very thing we were reacting against.""


 * AllMusic: "unleashed a curious blend of prog rock, ambience, and minimalism -- a sort of electronic hybrid that had listeners simultaneously scratching their heads while hitting the repeat button. "
 * "it makes for a prog rock reminder of early Aphex Twin (a longtime supporter of Clifford), and the mutual influence shows. "Imperial" overlaps several watery layers of sequencing for another (and especially chromatic) soundscape, inducing a sort of trance that has nothing to do with the dancefloor."
 * Spin "Whatever happened to "dream pop"? Well, the smartest of those bands have turned on to techno, and are mixing their lustrous guitar stuff with sampled pulses and sequenced hypno-rhytm" "The best of the the new techno-affiliated dream-popsters, Seefeel, had struck a sublime groove midway between MBV's sensual tumult and Aphex Twin's ambient serenity."
 * Pitchfork "Seefeel's music continues to sparkle 14 years later, an entire generation having built an ambient-motorik noise-pop aesthetic around Quique songs like "Plainsong". Too Pure finally brings the album back into print after far too long with this double-disc "Redux Edition", and listening now, you'll hear the beginnings of a still-thriving genre that remains slippery and unnamed, purely electronic music with a strange, tangy rock aftertaste-- think Tim Hecker's own post-shoegaze explorations into ultra-violet noise, Nathan Fake's plastic techno My Bloody Valentine homages, M83's heavily sequenced Vangeliscapes, a good chunk of the Darla Records catalog, and the twinkling textures of Mouse on Mars, who sent Too Pure a mash note with their demo after they had become infatuated with Quique. " "this rock-free space"
 * Pitchfork "Seefeel straddled the line between shoegaze and electronic music, never quite sure if they were a rock band with a fondness for sequencers or an ambient-minded collective who used guitars." "Mostly instrumental, it finds Seefeel exploring the outer limits of drone and ambience, with rippling waves of sound that are hard to place precisely" " Quique showed how the oceanic end of shoegaze could be found in a purely electronic world,"
 * Paste Magazine (listed among the top post-rock albums) [https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/post-rock/the-50-best-post-rock-albums/#8-seefeel-quique
 * Exclaim! "Originally lumped in with the shoegazing in-crowd of the early '90s, London-based Seefeel quickly discovered their ambitions were much more complex than their peers" "Tapping into the more ambient textures that would soon birth the booming IDM scene, Quique follows a similar path as Aphex Twins Selected Ambient work but with structures that a more rock-based band like Chapterhouse dreamed of matching." ". Clearly invested in the concept of washing out mists of digitally delayed, reverberating guitar lines, "Industrious is full-on techno doped up, while at the other end of the spectrum, "Plainsong re-imagines My Bloody Valentine with a skip in their step."
 * Record Collector: "Seefeel coerced their sound from a seemingly conventional palette of guitar, bass, drums and voice, yet seemed to use it to distance themselves from rock’s usual drives and impulses. Rather, valuing timbre and texture over songs and riffs, the quartet created a blissed-out, post-rock, posttechno music that sounded mesmerizing and euphoric, abstract and alien." " Seefeel’s feedback scrape, heartbeat basslines and blissful loops were frequently supposed as the by product of an imagined alliance between My Bloody Valentine and The Orb."
 * Billboard "Quique" by Seefeel which is getting justifiable props in the U.K. for its blend of agile guitar noodling over trance/hosue grooves."
 * Tiny Mix Tapes "Quique still sits comfortably alongside today’s synth heavy artists like Ulrich Schnauss, Strategy, and Stars of the Lid. Accordingly, the main reasons why Quique, or any enduring album for that matter, still survives are the indescribable, intangible elements that critics have a tough time putting into words, and copycat bands have an even tougher time duplicating."
 * Harp "As if caught in the vapor trail of My Bloody Valentine’s occasional dub/dance experiments, Quique shimmered with a futuristic ethereality that was far more substantial than the electro-ambience of the era, but also much less assaultive than the shoegazers Seefeel was affiliated with early on." "Fourteen years later, we should have seen numerous imitations and advancements on the drifting, dubby guitar/synth swoon Mark Clifford and the other members of Seefeel delivered on their debut album, but few artists have seen fit to travel down the road marked by Quique."
 * Los Angeles Times "[Quique] is a mix of fuzzy shoegaze guitars, ethereal dream-pop and some kind of churning electronic haze that rewards exploration, even if for the first time."
 * Chicago Tribune "Seefeel, "Quique" "A guitar band that successfully crosses the Orb with My Bloody Valentine"
 * The Charlotte Observer "The term "art rock" has been bandied about for years, usually to generate the impressionf that somehow pop music was a legitimate an "art" form as Renoir, da Vinci or Michelangelo, and to appeal to culture snobs who felt that rock 'n' roll was beneath contempt. "Seefeel though, are art, exploring the same terrain in music as the abstract masters did on canvas during the past 100 years." "Quique lies somewehre betwen the mid-period Cocteau Twins and Aphex Twin's scientific arcana. "And as part of the post-rock, post-techno ambient thing, Seefeel are all about abstraction."
 * The Charlotte Observer "Seefeel represent the boundary between electronic ambient and the realm of guitar dreampop. Beginning with a hazy My Bloody Valentine-influenced sound, Seefeel quickly evolved into an outfit willing to turn the conventions of guitar music upside down" here
 * Wired "Seefeel shows genre-bending potential but ultimately smothers it under the short-lived novelty of noise processing."

Now, what i've delved from the above is the following
 * People like comparing the album to Aphex Twin and My Bloody Valentine
 * There are several sources that say it's hard to describe or pinpoint music
 * Some people compare it to shoegaze, others say it doesn't really belong in that (and it's rare for journalists to say something ISN'T something, so this should be not taken with a grain of salt)
 * People are not calling it ambient techno, which is currently in the genre box.
 * The genres that seem to be mentioned a lot are electronic, dream pop, techno and shoegaze (the latter which, is debated per the above). I'd be curious to see what others feel should/could belong here but strictly based on the above (unless more sources can be found)