The Telescopes

Hello, you're listening to the audio.com podcast, a place for conversations about music, sound, art and culture. I'm Ilia Rogochevski, and today I will be speaking with Stephen Lawrie, frontman of the English psychedelic rock band, The Telescopes. The Telescopes were formed in 1987 by Lawrie. Their early abrasive sound was influenced by bands such as The Stooges and Suicide. This positioned The Telescopes against the prominent indie sound of the time, along with similar shoegaze and space rock groups such as Loop and My Bloody Valentine. Their early singles and debut album Taste, from 1989, displayed these tendencies, while a string of EPs and their untitled, or self-titled second album, released on Creation Records in the early 90s, explored a more fragile and melodic palette. After almost a decade of limited activity, Lawrie revived The Telescopes name with a new lineup, releasing Third Wave in 2002. The band's sound evolved further still, this time taking advantage of home recording and new digital techniques. Since then, the band has been following an ever-evolving trajectory that saw them exploring different textures, sounds and genres. I first came across the band over 10 years ago when Lawrie was touring with One Unique Signal as his backing group, revisiting early Telescopes material from an even harsher noise rock angle. The Telescopes have been especially prolific in the last few years, with two studio albums being released this year alone, Experimental Health on Weisskalt Records and Of Tomorrow on Tapete. The band's 16th album, Growing Eyes Becoming String, the result of sessions that took place in 2013, will see the light of day in February 2024 on Fuzz Club Records. I caught up with Stephen before a Telescopes show in East London back in October. We discussed the history of the band, how the pandemic influenced his new material and zeroed in on his writing process. But I began this interview, as I often do, by asking him what his earliest sonic memories were. SL: I used to live in a small mining village called East Hartford in Northumberland and well my family were from there on my dad's side and like for a while he was like running the local youth club, he's on the committee there and it was a very small village like 12 streets like Catherine Cookson or something like that, typical north east mining village. But him and his committee were responsible for bringing a lot of the youth music there. He'd been in the band himself in the 60s and I think it was him leaving me with teenagers when I was a toddler and he went to a committee meeting while they were all having like a big disco or something like that and I remember hearing, I'm ashamed to say like T-Rex, but being more infatuated by Elton John's Crocodile Rock. And I just thought wow what is that, you know? What is this thing? I'm watching all the teenagers dancing and you know like all the clothes they were wearing and stuff like that and a whole different world, but mainly the music and yeah I guess it was T-Rex and Elton John. I'm not an Elton John fan at all, I only really like that song out of nostalgia really because it takes me back it's like I've never really followed his music since apart from what's stuffed down your throat in the mainstream. On a deeper level, I mean, that was like the sugar rush. It was like whoa! What is this? I guess some people might have got that when they saw the Beatles for the first time or something like that but music in depth like that really appealed to me it wasn't really bands or anything like that it was things like long car journeys with my parents and just hearing the windscreen wipers. And I used to do things like sit in an airing cupboard and listen to the noises and stuff like that so I kind of had before I knew anything about what industrial music was or anything like that. So things like that and I'd hear melodies and sounds in everything, you know. The whole heating system in the house to me it was like that Walt Disney cartoon where all the pipes in the building have all got little personalities in the valves and they're all making a symphony of sound and they've all got characters. That became important to me: character in music, you know, like every sound has to have its own character sort of thing. IR: What made you start writing music? SL: Probably life turning into shit, basically. You know like in my teens. Various things: I had parents splitting up, my grandfather who I was close to died and stuff like that. He was my rock sort of thing and like um I just turned to writing you know. I used to write imaginary albums and have imaginary bands in my head and stuff like that. I tried joining bands and they kicked me out they just wanted a guitarist. They didn't want anyone with any input and it wasn't until I just turned my back on all that sort of stuff and thought: I got my own imaginary band in my head, you know, and just started writing for that. Then it started to attract other people and it became more real you know. IR: I was looking back to some interviews that you've done in the late 80s and one of the things that you mentioned that you sort of formed the band as a kind of protest against the C86 NME cassette scene, which is a lot of jangle pop indie rock stuff. Obviously, I mean, you said that over 30 years ago but if you can think back to that time what was it about that music that made you feel like you wanted to go the other way? SL: Well, it also inspired me because it was like a DIY thing you know. It was like anyone can do it. Like the fanzines – Sniffing Glue ethos – I suppose from punk and stuff like that. "Here's one chord, here's another, here's another... Now form a band!" I was inspired by these DIY shows and everything but the music didn't really cut it for me, you know. I was listening to things like TV Eye, the live album from The Stooges and that was giving me the kind of buzz that I wanted. And that's the kind of road we went down, you know. Anything that's got that energy, and noise bands that we liked as well. I guess there's a lot of bravado in what I said back then. It's like everybody wants to destroy what's gone before, don't they? Especially when you're a teenager, you take that stance because you feel a sense of urgency and revolution, I suppose. Well, you want to create your own identity; using their means to create our own identity, you know. But instead of paying tribute we challenged them. I guess that's where the mindset was in The Telescopes. It's probably through insecurity. You feel like you have to challenge things. So perhaps for some kind of validation or quest to find out what exactly you mean, because quite often you know how you feel but you don't know what you mean. You don't know how to explain it. Well, I certainly didn't back then. IR: Are you any closer to knowing what you mean or explaining what you feel now? SL: I just find that it's not as important. It's your instincts are basically it. Trust them. Follow them and they lead you down paths where you find things that you didn't know you were looking for. You find things on a deeper level. I can't really sit down and say: this is the concept of what we're trying to achieve now. It's an open organic thing that's constantly going. I can tell you like kind of what the mindset is, where I'm loosely thinking in a foggy way. I'll go on that journey through there and an album will come out and and then it surprises me. It's like oh wow, so yeah yeah that's what I think about that and that, you know. It's making sense to myself in a way, but it's constantly changing. IR: I remember reading an interview where you talked about the recording of #untitled second and you popped some Alka-Seltzer pills into a glass of water and you recorded that sort of bubbling fizzing sound and used that as a base layer for a song [Spaceships] on that record. But I'm interested to find out: is was that the first point when you started using alternative sound sources in your music? SL: No. We were doing things like that with Taste, on the first album. That's when it really started. We started messing around with overdubs on the first couple of EPs and to us that was a big thing: "Oh, overdubs!" And then you start thinking about and you read about other bands and you think well yeah you know like I've had those thoughts as well. I'm like, let's try it. We used to do all sorts of things like we'd raid other people's tapes in the studios and copy bits of their music across and try and make it sound about a million miles different to what they were doing; make these little loops and mix it in with the noise. IR: So you were sampling stuff? SL: Yeah, tape loops. I mean an early form of sampling, yeah. By the time we were actually using samplers like Akais and stuff like that, in the 90s, we were making our own samples out of our own sounds. But yeah we used to nick people's bits of tape and slow them down speed them up, mess them around, chop them up until we had just some little thing that sounded good with the noise. Mixed it in and people ask you: "How do you get your guitar to sound like that?" IR: So The Telescopes have had many different lineup changes over the years and lots of different experimentations in terms of sound making devices and the types of instruments that you choose to use. And for me, correct me if I'm wrong, but that sort of experimentation really begins with Third Wave, which came out in 2002. That record started, more or less, as far as I understand because you've been getting into computers and recording. Instead of using a studio you're using your own recording equipment and it's relatively inexpensive and therefore you have the time and the luxury to, you know, develop your sound and take it to different places. Since that point how has that working practice changed for you if at all? SL: Well that was a big change because up until then on Telescopes albums I had to fight to justify any kind of experimentation in the studio. All the musicians get bored: "Why are we doing that? Why don't we just play it like we do live? That's what we should do - get in a room make sound. Bang, bang bang." But I was never liked that. I've always been more inquisitive. I can still hear things and it's a fine balance sometimes. Do you put it in or do you leave it out? Is it enough that you think you can hear it or should you follow your inspiration and try and do that, you know? I think when it got to Third Wave, because I was completely at the helm then. I had no people telling me what to do at all - which took me eight years to shake off - all that sort of stuff. When we finished with Creation we lost all the means, you know. No one was going to pay to put us in the studio for ages because music had changed. There was grunge, Britpop and stuff like that. They were getting those sort of budgets. People wanted to invest in things like Oasis or Oasis-sounding bands. So, for me, finding computers was liberating. That was the beginning of the journey with Third Wave. Just feeling at ease, trying anything I want. Complete freedom. And it's just been the same ever since. I just follow my own inspiration and if I want to do something that sounds like it's just a band in a room, it's because I feel inspired to do that. Or if I've got some nagging thing, I've got some ideas or some strange things I want to try, then I can do that as well. And sometimes the two get mixed up. There's no rules. whereas pre-Third Wave it was I was having to justify it to lots of people all around me. Lots of people that had nothing to do with the original inspiration and you lose track of what the original idea was behind the band you know. IR: Actually you mentioned this quite a few times, in interviews that I've read, that reference to the original vision of the band: the name, The Telescopes, which you describe as "beyond the realm of natural vision". You kind of use as your tagline basically. SL: I took that out of a Victorian thesaurus. That was their description of what a telescope was. I just thought that is absolutely perfect because I was looking for a name. I never wanted to be like a band that... You see, I was doing an imaginary band in my head before I was a band. So like I'd get like sheets of paper, staple them together with all the lyrics and everything, and the title of the album, and that'd be my album. And in my head I'd made an album. Then there'd be a story that went on in my head about what happened to this band after they made this album, and what went on and how the next album's going to be. There'd be a journey and it'd be different the next one, because I admired artists that were like that. So I wanted a name that would reflect that, that it's a journey. Not just like the Ramones or someone like that where it's 1, 2, 3, Go! every album - always! IR: Yeah it sort of gives you license to do whatever you like. SL: Yeah yeah, I mean of course I use formulas. I say I don't but I do. Of course I do. But it's something to be played with and also there's a sense of you've got to let the song write itself. So you're aware of things like that. For instance, my instincts might say to me it'd be great if you did a bridge here. So I already know what a bridge is. I know all these things. It's like working with digital music, it's good if you know how to do tape because then you're using the digital equipment a lot better than just maximizing everything. IR: You've been doing this a long time. How do you keep things interesting for yourself? SL: Well, I'd stop if it wasn't. Sometimes you know I've done a lot of albums or something I think what am I going to write about next? And you can't force it, you can't say to life: "Hey, give me something to write about now!" You know, search through your life - which bit am I going to write about now? It'll come to you and you just write it. Usually based on life and experiences and things that all start coming together and then you find that you're starting to work towards the thread. But you've got to let that thread vibrate itself which takes a lot of patience. You do have to apply yourself. You have to try as well - discipline. But you can't make it happen. You can't force it. If you force it, it's going to sound forced. If you're completely at ease with it, it'll sound completely at ease. If you're all getting together on a sunny day and it's a beautiful vibe that's what's going to come across you know. IR: Do you think rural life influences what you do? You grew up in Northumberland, you lived in a cottage in West Yorkshire, you're now in Shropshire. Does living away from distractions help with writing and recording? SL: Well it's not living away from distractions. I get loads of distractions, but I've lived in cities and I've been creative in cities. I mean I'm in my own little world anyway. I'm in my own little studio and it doesn't really matter what's going on in the outside world, whether I'm in a city or what. It's just what I feel more comfortable with, you know. I like going walking and stuff and I like fields and nature and stuff like that. IR: Do words come to you when you walk? SL: Sometimes yeah or if I'm cycling or even doing something mundane, you know. Words are something I'm always circling. I've always got things that are hanging around. I'm finding better ways of saying them that might fit more rhythmically with music and trying to find the melody in it. Usually it's a process of simplification. IR: Let's talk about Experimental Health. It was recorded using relatively cheap equipment: pocket operators, broken synths, toys, things like that. What was the reason behind using this sonic palette? SL: These things seem to like fit with the theme that I was going with the Experimental Health thing. These things all make nice little bleeping noises and put me in that kind of environment you know, like that hospital environment. I'm quite often I'm in a hospital or something I'm fascinated by the sounds of the equipment. IR: Was it inspired by the pandemic at all? SL: Well yeah of course yeah and personal experiences that went through that especially with my father-in-law who developed Covid. He had dementia. There was no real sort of game plan for people with dementia, was there? I mean people with dementia quite often rely on routine so he had his little triangle that he walked a lot of the time and everybody's like: "Oh no, no, no. You've got to stay indoors. You've got to stay indoors." And it confuses people. He doesn't understand it. He's trying to make sense of something senseless. That just makes it worse. Ironically, we spent all that time trying to keep him away from visiting us and in his house. He gets it in the hospital. He's so confused he falls in the street and kept having accidents because he just wasn't comfortable with himself anymore and ends up in the hospital. And catches it there, because they're not watching over him. He's got dementia and he's wandering into patients rooms who've got Covid and gets it. So there was that and also my partner works in care as well and it was a lot of experiences that she had. IR: You've been really prolific over the last few years sometimes releasing a couple of albums a year, you have reissues coming out. Is that just because you've had things accumulating over a certain period of time and it just so happens that they're all being released more or less at around the same time – you had two albums come out this year – or have you been feeling more creative more responsive to making music? SL: I think it's just because you always feel like when you're doing it that you're kind of not justified in some way. You look at everybody else (well not everybody, but a lot of people are doing things that they don't want to do) and a lot of them tell you, especially when you're younger, say i'm a musician or something like that and they just laugh and say: "Yeah, yeah. But what are going to do for a proper job?" So you spend your whole life thinking that you're not valid in some way and everything's against you. It's just getting to that point where you realise, well man i'm in my 50s now. If i'm not comfortable in my own self and what I do now then I'm never gonna be. So it's just a case of... you have that conversation with yourself. It's time to accept that this is just what you do and just accept it and do it and get on with it. And you find that once you remove all those obstacles you're just free. I mean it doesn't make it easy. You still got to work at it but you just commit to it on a larger scale. And that's what you do every day, from morning till night, and when you're sleeping. You just feel absolutely committed to it without caring what anybody else thinks anymore.