The Telescopes

As anyone who's witnessed recent shows by both the Telescopes and Sonic Boom will tell you, neither of them choose to wallow in past glories, instead preferring to challenge the listening and toleration levels simultaneously.

Sadly, the other part of this triumverate of experimentation Fuxa had to pull out due to work permit problems, meaning that Sonic Boom's oscillating, hi-tech driven E.A.R. (Experimental Audio Research) project got 45 minutes to either lucidly transfix or irritate to the point of no return - depending on your preference, of course. For these ears, it would have been nice for Mr Kember to have picked up his guitar at some point and belted out the odd tune or two from his extensive back catalogue, but on the positive side he looks healthier than he has done in years and seemed to be enjoying his random noise thing even if others in the room were more than a little perplexed.

Similarly, the Telescopes have also been known to confound and confuse in equal measures - often during the same show - since Stephen Lawrie and Jo Doran chose to start working again under the name that was more synonymous with ethereal garage-rock melanges in the late 80s and early 90s than the adventures in sound that their sets mainly consist of these days.

With an array of vintage keyboards, theremins, guitars and god-knows-what-else lined up along the stage, the trio, completed by long-time collaborator Lorin Halsall, set about making a dense sound of whirring noises, incendiary fretboard hacking and pulsating drones all held together by Doran's gently looped guitar behind it all; fortunately, as with the majority of their better, more recent shows, it all came together like the score leading up to the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho. By the time they threw in a rare - albeit in an electronically gloomy fashion - 'Flying', flashbacks of 1992 and hooped bretton jerseys became apparent in a 100 or so mind's eyes.

And that sums up the Telescopes, 2005 model - blissfully unaware of what fashion or indeed the general record buying public may think of them, but still overriding the boundaries at the same time.