Static Charge The Telescopes

• 1 White Noise 04:40
• 2 28 Grams 05:07
• 3 Revolutionary Blues 04:28
• 4 Come Around 05:05
• 5 Still Nothing 04:31
• 6 I Dream Of Fever 03:37
• 7 Desolation Grows 09:54
• Total Runtime 37:22

Info for Static Charge

Though vaguely considered along the lines of noise, space rock, dream pop and psychedelic, The Telescopes have consistently expanded boundaries, colouring outside the lines with possibility. This house has many rooms, embraced across genres, influential to many, all embracing, in an orbit of its own.

Static Charge is The Telescopes’ 19th studio album since the group’s inception in 1988 – and their 7th release on Tapete Records.

After a three-month tour of the UK and Europe, the all embracing sounds of The Telescopes return with a lean blitz of seditionary hits.

Take a jolt of Static Charge and step beyond the realm of natural vision. Stone age beats, outsider sounds, low end disturbance unite in resistance to the new weirdness of existence.

The Telescopes experience is known for having an ever revolving line up that can vary between one and twenty people. On this album, The Telescopes are a four piece consisting of The Telescopes founder and protagonist Stephen Lawrie on guitar and vocals, Darrell Carter on guitar, Robert Prest on bass with John Lynch on drums and percussion.

Interesting facts: John can also be found playing with The Jonny Halifax Invocation. Darrell releases great music under the name of Fromme and Robert’s Father used to fly Fela Kuti around in a private jet.

The album was written, recorded and produced within a two month period from November 2025 to January 2026 at Stephen Lawrie’s Butterfly House studio in Shropshire. The whole album was recorded mostly live with the only overdubs being vocal harmonies. There are seven songs in total.

The Telescopes

The Telescopes
Emerging from the dreary English East Midlands of the late 1980s, The Telescopes stood out with a noisy, psychedelic sound that was both chaotic and dreamlike. While lumped in with the shoegaze movement, the band had a distinct style that actually set them well apart from peers like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive.

Frontman Stephen Lawrie formed The Telescopes in 1987, initially inspired by the experimental sounds of bands like The Velvet Underground. From the start, the band rejected conventional song structures, sometimes preferring long, hypnotic jams laced with layers of distorted guitars and effects and sometimes preferring...short, intense blasts laced with layers of distorted guitars and effects. Their debut album, Taste, is a neglected classic, half the time (as on 'I Fall, She Screams') wedding Lawrie's screaching vocals to Joanna Doran's even-more-screaching guitars and half the time (as on 'Violence') lulling listeners into a false sense of security with slower, sludgier methods.

After some lineup changes, The Telescopes' second album The Telescopes (later reissued as #Untitled Second) came out in 1992 on Creation Records, pushing their experiments with drone and noise even further. The album highlighted the band's daring uniqueness, though it polarized critics and fans alike.

The Telescopes have continued following their own creative vision over the decades since. In 2002, they released Third Wave, melding their psychedelic sound with electronics. Their album Hidden Fields arrived in 2005, featuring one long 60-minute improvised track.

In recent years, under the restless but steely guidance of Lawrie, The Telescopes have been increasingly prolific, releasing a string of albums and EPs that showcase their never-compromising style. Exploding Head Syndrome (2019) ran warped psychedelia through a modern lens, while Songs of Love and Revolution (2021) had a more urgent political tone.

Now past the 30-year mark - something that few people would have predicted back in the shoegaze era - The Telescopes remain ceaselessly innovative and true to their own artistic spirits. A strong case could be made that they are one of UK indie's best-kept secrets.

This album contains no booklet.