Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 02:09:14 -0700 From: einexile the meek (einexile@netcom.com) Subject: seefeel vs disjecta I was thinking today, on the way home from buying Clean Pit & Lid (or whatever the hell it's called?), that it's odd how no once seems to care about Mark Clifford anymore simply because he's changed the name of his solo project. Seefeel did look to be turning into just that, a solo project, and the rest of the band appear to have been more or less sitting on their asses for the last two years. It took me so long to get Looking for Snags that I still don't have it and am not sure I remember its exact title correctly. I assumed it wasn't a far cry out of Succour's way, mostly based on a very good review I read some time ago. (This review gained credibility in my mind since Elvisa hated it.) Well now I've got Clean Pit & Lid, I am seeing something of a change. It's not that the music is bad or that I'm not entertained or that Clifford no longer possesses sinister vision. It's that he really is copying other artists now in a noticeable way, and he really is repeating himself now rather than just borrowing and having a musical and stylistic vocabulary. This album is full of nice ideas and pleasant atmospheres, and it's too soon for me to tell whether or not it is a solid work or an obnoxious collection, but I do know that I'm hearing a lot that I've heard before and I'm hearing a lot that bores me. Most glaring are the glaring Aphex Twin and mu-ziq references. Sometimes I think the poor bastard is actually sampling from their work. It's no longer just that they inhabit the same universe (and in all fairness Quique predated SAW2 and may be its equal) but they are making the same points and in a way it's become almost formulaic. Clifford has obviously been a big fan of James and it's my admittedly cursory and premature theory that I Care Because You Do has baffled him and left him swimming in a soup of confusion with nothing to draw from. It's not that drawing from and being influenced by are Bad Things, but if you love your sources too much and try too hard to be original, you end up ripping them off wholesale, and this is what I really see happening at the root. The songs are good and the music is new, but it's not godhead and it's a little old. Unless I'm missing something, it lacks the careful, brilliant subtleties of Succour and the alien newness of Quique. Music is for fun, my favorite band is Current 93, and far be it from me to always require new and subtle--but in their absence I do hope for acceptable substitutes, and the only substitution I see going on here is of ambient staples for inspiration. The Aurobindo album is boring as hell but at least I didn't misplace the thing after owning it for twelve hours. Another Warp artist bites the dust. What the hell is going on?? e Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 02:51:48 EDT From: Accelera@aol.com Subject: disjecta :::::::from kake mix records. dec 98 will see the release of a split 12" featuring disjecta/calicoma both artist are contributing one track each.