By: Rich Buley
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Released on August 7, 2015 via Tapete Records
“A colossal, unnerving psychedelic fuzz” is how I would describe the first Telescopes record that I listened to. Taste, their debut album, was released in 1989 and I have to admit that, at the age of 15, I had not heard anything as remotely cathartic and downright ferocious before. Sure, understanding the context of the band and where their sound came from arrived later, but the impact on me of tracks like the raging ‘There Is No Floor’ and the bleeding cacophony that still is ‘Suicide’ was significant. The Telescopes, more than any other band at the time, demonstrated to me how an enormous slab of squalling, chaotic noise can be absolutely terrifying and tremendously beautiful, often at the same time. I was hooked for life. The impact on those around me was also considerable because, with the exception of The Nephilim by Fields Of The Nephilim, Taste was the album that I got told to “turn it down!” most often by my long-suffering parents, who were probably trying to entertain dinner guests at the time, and were not entirely happy with Stephen Lawrie screaming down the stairs, over the top of a million distorted guitars.
From such abrasive origins came a quite surprising spell on Creation Records, with the Precious Little EP and a dreamier, self-titled second album in 1992 seeing The Telescopes reigning in the mind-blowing white-outs and seemingly doing their best to fit in with a roster at the time that included My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive and The Boo Radleys. It didn’t last long.
That incarnation of the band split in 1992 and since then Lawrie has continued to record and play live as The Telescopes with a whole host of guest musicians and bands, including LSD and The Search for God, 93MillionMilesFromTheSun and One Unique Signal. The experimentation with noise and drone has continued unabated, with later releases incorporating a greater use of electronics in the mix, until 2013’s Harm saw 2 twenty minute, largely improvised pieces of epic, visceral constructs, and Lawrie continuing his one-man telescopic quest to deliver, in his words, music ‘beyond the realm of natural vision’.
Hidden Fields, The Telescopes’ eighth album, sees Glaswegian alternative rockers St Deluxe provide the backing this time, and whether their rather more structured approach to music had an impact on the recorded output, or whether Lawrie himself decided on more song based material is hard to know, but opener ‘You Know The Way’ is possibly The Telescopes at their most (recently) accessible. Indeed, with the dark, rumbling thunder of the rhythm section, the haemorrhaging, feedback-strewn guitar and Lawrie’s very distinctive, almost chant-like vocal, it could be a long lost cut from that fabulous debut album, and it is that good.
‘Absence’ reverts to buzzing, whirling drone, which gradually unravels and ends in static, before ‘In Every Sense’ looms into earshot with a surprisingly danceable drum beat, and a persistent, memorable riff. If it wasn’t for the brooding, soon-to-erupt guitar maelstrom in the background, it could even pass as a Horrors track from their Primary Colours era, which was a very fine era indeed, by the way.
‘Don’t Bring Me Round’ does its best to prepare you for what’s to come with a gathering storm of spiralling, dizzying guitar and looping rhythms, before the fifteen minute ‘The Living Things’ concludes proceedings with a slowly constructed, brilliantly executed passage of developing fury, guitars buzzing and grinding with layer upon layer of distortion and wilfully induced feedback.
As the so-called psych rock bandwagon rolls inexorably on in 2015, it is entirely appropriate for one of the old guard, the visionaries, of psychedelic guitar music to step back into the limelight now and let everyone hear what ‘psych’ should really sound like. Hidden Fields, when consumed in one sitting, is an imposing, menacing record, not without satisfying glimpses of light, but containing more than enough of that startling Telescopes DNA to have many an unhappy parent once again scurrying up the stairs to remonstrate with their hopefully awestruck offspring.
