Third Wave (album)

Third Wave is the third studio album by English noise rock band The Telescopes.

It was released on vinyl and CD by Double Agent Records in 2002, later reissued on vinyl by Weisskalt Records in 2021 as a limited edition of 300.

Background

The album title makes reference to the way the tracks were constructed, as Stephen Lawrie explains in an interview with American music journalist Todd E. Jones, "We'd allow each other to freely improvise the structures, recording everything to wave files and cutting away at each texture to let in different shades". Metaphysically, the music was an "electronic ocean where waves of sound and rhythm rolled over the listener."

The record is notable as it heralded a surprise return by the band after a 10-year hiatus and possessed a more experimental approach to music whilst cementing Lawrie's reputation for having a fluid and revolutionary approach to songwriting and performance. For Lawrie, the album was in part a reclamation of proper artistic freedom and identity, rejecting formulaic and repetitive processes in composing records.

The majority of the musicians who played on the album adhered to a freedom principle where each musician improvised along to a track several times with everything recorded and key moments chosen. In some instances the parts were written. It was observed that the only musicians who struggled with the process were the trained session musicians who relied on a score to work with whereas the more self-taught musicians possessed a higher degree of intuition and were more at ease with working instinctively. This was slightly problematic as Lawrie did not read music therefore a workable compromise had to be developed which differed with each player.

Unlike the first two Telescopes albums which were mainly written on guitar, Third Wave was predominantly written on piano and organ.