The Telescopes

Fishbowl Events Presents

The Telescopes

Two Palms, Hackney

28th September 2024

After we had an amazing show at Shacklewell Arms with The Telescopes back in 2021 we're very excited to have them back at Hackney's newest venue! They're back with an amazing new album "Growing Eyes Becoming String."

Growing Eyes Becoming String is the sixteenth studio album from British noise-rock
pioneers The Telescopes. Recorded between Berlin and Leeds back in 2013, it’s a lost
Telescopes treasure that nearly never was, rescued from the ether and now finally set for
release by Fuzz Club Records.

The origins of Growing Eyes Becoming String go back a decade when, in 2013, The
Telescopes were invited to record an album at Brian Jonestown Massacre's new studio-in-
progress in Berlin. With a line-up consisting of founding member Stephen Lawrie and
London psychedelic unit One Unique Signal.

On reaching Berlin, the group teamed up with good friend and author/visual artist Will
Carruthers (Spacemen 3, Dead Skeletons). Carruthers, also a skilled carpenter, built
soundproofing boards and recruited Anton’s producer at the time, Fabien Leseure, and
together they sourced equipment from all over the city and soon had a functioning studio up
and running. Between Boxing Day and New Years Day, most of the music for the four tracks
that would make up side one – ‘Vanishing Lines’, ‘(In The) Hidden Fields’, ‘Dead Head
Lights’ and ‘We Carry Along’ – was recorded, with Lawrie planning on finishing up back in
his own studio.

On returning to the UK, the group turned to Richard Formby (Spectrum, The Jazz
Butcher) in Leeds for side two. Here, Lawrie and the band began to flesh out the record,
laying down the three tracks – ‘Get Out Of Me’, ‘What You Love’ and ‘There Is No Shore’ –
that would make up its B-side.

“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 the drive to Berlin with almost zero visibility, we were relying on the heightened instinct of
being entirely in the now.”

The result was shaping up to be another masterfully hypnotic set of compositions that
matched its more melodic spaced-out moments against heavy drone-rock blow-outs.
However, before Lawrie could finish the recording and mixing, a crashed hard-drive meant
that the recordings were presumed lost forever and The Telescopes moved on to other
projects. Fast-forward to a few years ago and Byron of One Unique Signal by chance
uncovered some forgotten back-ups of the sessions and over the pandemic, Lawrie finally
went back to finish what he started.

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 were actually creating more song-based music in a parallel
existence.

Across its seven tracks are all the trademarks of quality that long-time 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. As Lawrie
puts it: “Loaded with guitars, noise and melody, swirling around pounding repetition, Growing
Eyes Becoming String is a more vocal document of where The Telescopes’ head was at
during that time.”