The Telescopes Growing Eyes Becoming String

Growing Eyes Becoming String is the sixteenth studio album from British noise-rock pioneers The Telescopes. Originally recorded over two sessions back in 2013 – one over a harsh Berlin winter in the Brian Jonestown Massacre studio with Fabien Leseure, and a second back in Leeds with early Telescopes producer Richard Formby – it’s a lost treasure that nearly never was. Succumbing to a hard-drive crash nearly a decade ago, the sessions were presumed lost and soon forgotten, until now. Miraculously rescued from the digital ether and finished by founding member Stephen Lawrie in his own studio over the pandemic, the album is now finally set for release via Fuzz Club and reveals another side to where The Telescopes were at in 2013.

Where their physical output at the time mostly consisted of experimental noise improvisations, so far removed from any obvious structure, Growing Eyes Becoming String shows how The Telescopes – Lawrie backed by London experimental unit One Unique Signal – were actually creating more song-based music in a parallel existence. Across its seven tracks are all the trademarks of quality that longtime fans associate with The Telescopes’ music. Solid songs, melody, harmony, noise, dissonance, improvisation, experimentation and an all-embracing journey beyond the realm of natural vision.

“The objective with both sessions was to go in blind and be entirely in the moment”, Lawrie recalls: “There were no preconceived ideas, everything was written as it went along. Much like our drive to Berlin, through an intense blizzard with almost zero visibility, we were relying on the heightened instinct of being entirely in the now.” The result is another masterfully hypnotic set that matches its more melodic spaced-out moments against heavy drone-rock blow-outs: “Loaded with guitars, noise and melody, swirling around pounding repetition, this is a more vocal document of where The Telescopes head was at during that time.”