‘Experimental Health’ is the 14th album from The Telescopes and their third release on the Weisskalt label.

The album was created entirely independently by Stephen Lawrie in a remote cottage in West Yorkshire between January to May 2022.

The record is folk music made with broken toys and cheap synths – mostly Pocket Operators and miniature synths. There are no guitars present on the album, most of the instrumentation costing £50 or less. The complexity of sound rests within the simplicity of the composition and musical arrangements.

“Sometimes it can be harmful to enforce safety”

We are already excited about the release of your 14th album, ‘Experimental Health’. The album seems to be completely personal as it was created in a remote cottage in West Yorkshire. What led to the decision to make this album completely alone?

Stephen Lawrie: The album was conceived and written during all the lockdowns. By the time I was ready to record I knew exactly how I wanted to go about creating it, the natural flow of things was to just do it all myself.

It’s like a new chapter, something completely different but at the same time we still hear your spirit between the tracks. Tell us about the main idea behind ‘Experimental Health’?

Same as any record I make, I try, and create music that sets the tone for the subject matter. Using electronics felt much more appropriate on these songs, I don’t think guitars would have worked anywhere near as well.

<a href="https://weisskaltrecords.bandcamp.com/album/experimental-health">Experimental Health by The Telescopes</a>

So you packed all these broken toys and synths and just disappeared in the cottage?

The instruments were already there. I lived in a cottage at the time. I had done it for some years. I created a lot of records there.

How did you first encounter the work of Edward ‘Diogenese’ McKenzie, that inspired the lead single, ‘The Turns’?

Mckenzie wasn’t an artist, Mckenzie was a vagrant that the Cornish artist Robert Lenkiewicz took under his wing.

Mckenzie was full of arcane wisdom such as “Live while you can and live in clover, when you’m dead you’m dead all over,” which I borrowed for ‘The Turns’; “live while you can and live all over, when you’re dead you’ll be dead all over”.

McKenzie was an interesting character himself though, he said he was happy to be a vagrant as it meant he wasn’t spending his wages on booze. Mckenzie also agreed to have his body preserved as a memento mori after his death and retained as an artefact beneath the bed of Robert Lenkiewicz.

I discovered Lenkiewicz through my fiancé, she and her sister were painted by him.

“You can’t lockdown a demented mind”

Where does your inspiration come from… on tracks like ’45e’ and ‘Repetitive Brain Injury’ you are referring to some of the recent problems with our society…

45e is the clause protecting us all from being forced to undergo medical procedures. When I heard the government was looking at amending that clause, the words “Drugs so awesome they have to force them” came into my head and the song grew from there.

‘Repetitive Brain Injury’ was inspired by an old saying about dementia. “Let him wander, let him roam, always something will bring him back home.” Dementia has its own routine, you can’t lockdown a demented mind. You have to let it wander. I was thinking about how sometimes it can be harmful to enforce safety.