“Every sound you ever heard was but a preliminary exercise in hearing, for the all-embracing maelstrom of The Telescopes”  (Melody Maker 1989) One of the more interesting bands to be on Creation Records, influencing Brian Jonestown Massacre, the whole Shoegaze, Spacerock, and Psych movements among many others.   The Telescopes are the creative vision of Stephen Lawrie with a revolving line up.  Formed in 1987, they released their first record in 1988, a split flexi-disc with Loop.  A string of releases followed for Cheree Records, What Goes On Records and Creation Records, each one hitting the higher reaches of the UK independent charts, some of them making it into the UK mainstream charts.  Following the release of their second album in 1992, Lawrie put the group on hold, returning in 2002 with a renewed vigor. The Wire magazine described them as having: “a very real & crazy originality that carries fat tons of wallop’. The NME again found them: ‘In another universe altogether, incredible’.  Arch Drude, Julian Cope championed two of their releases on his Head Heritage site, referring to their, ’suspended-in-space magnificence’.  The late great John Peel, who they recorded two sessions for, heralded their return championing their Third Wave album exclaiming “The Telescopes have resurfaced and I am amazed and glad they are still practicing their mysterious art”. In 2011 Portishead invited them to play at the first ever ATP festival at Alexandre Palace in London.  The following year The Black Angels / Reverberation Appreciation Society invited them to Austin Psych Fest. 2013-14 saw their 7th release, HARM, on Seattle based label Neon Sigh.  Recorded entirely in one take, with members of LSD & The Search For God and BJM at Bedrock Studios, Los Angeles.  Drowned In Sound called it a visceral exercise in harshly constructed noise. In 2015 The Telescopes signed with Hamburg’s Tapete Records and released two critically acclaimed albums for the label: Hidden Fields; an unexpected return from the group's recent expeditions into the outer reaches of free-drone noise. The psychiatric sounds of The Telescopes in a concise inner sensory rush. Their most song-based output for some time.  As Light Return; maintains the balance of its predecessor, setting a parallel course between song-based noise structures and freeform impressionism, while containing some of The Telescopes most crucial listening so far. Following pulverizing performances at both Manchester and Liverpool Psych festivals in 2017 where they picked up a stream of glowing reviews, The Telescopes followed up As Light Return just months later with Stone Tape on the Yard Press label, their tenth album to date. Keep a listening ear.