Released on Warp, “Sol.Hz” is Seefeel's first album after fifteen years of silence on the format long playing. The title literally translates as sun plus electricitybut leaves a smoky ambiguity that is the basis of the return: a surrealist becoming of dilated chords and elusive harmonies that have their roots in shoegaze. The album is arranged as full pressure ambient, and on an appropriate system underground bass emerges which creates an altered and suffocating atmosphere. The protagonist, however, is the percussive dub soul, which marks all the low and medium frequencies with a surgical cut; a presence that, track after track, becomes increasingly abrasive.
The shots appear fragmented, almost random; when they emerge, they destabilize. Mark Clifford's synthetic architectures, Sarah Peacock's candid voice and her processed guitars move on this irregular rhythm. Synthesizers oscillate between multiple microclimates: the reference to the Idm tradition that made them pioneers and the creation of atmosphere, cathartic or enigmatic, rather than a defined melody. Peacock's guitar moves between feedback and effects that sublimate the airy and the claustrophobic, while his singing proceeds in alternating steps, giving way to the instrument and the reverberations.
Compared to previous works, “Sol.Hz” moves decisively on the slow rhythm of ambient dub. The merit of the work lies in finding a balance between the telluric materiality and the ineffability of nocturnal suggestions, whose intensity accumulates through stratification rather than development. In this dense and aquatic landscape, “Falling First” stands out with its graceful and ascetic sequence, almost a ambient house on seismic tremors: one of the few bright openings in a disk that prefers shadow to light. Seefeel find their measure in a suspended and corporeal electronics, which never stops seeking new balances.
06/05/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
