In the mid-1990s,
Telescopes singer Stephen Lawrie and guitarist Joanna Doran launched a new
project, Unisex, featuring a new rhythm section and, notably,
Nick Hemming on keyboards.
After the band debuted with the single
They Do Feel Strange (No Name, 1996),
the idea languished for a while, but then took off with
the mini-album Deadlock (Doubleagent, 1999) and the full-length
Stratosfear (Double Agent, 2000).
Unisex plays lush, melodic dream-pop with
shoegaze-style droning and dark-punk atmospherics.
The album is eminently psychedelia, but arranged with a wealth of instruments
(theremin, clarinet, vibraphone, vocoder, piano).
It sounds like a hybrid of Spiritualized and
Radiohead, but also Klaus Schulze and Brian Eno.
If Full Force Of The Sun, Midnight In The Stratosphere and
Calmer Song are obvious lysergic trips, the
futuristic lounge music of Autopilot opens new horizons, and the
band excels at merging different styles
(exotica and jazz in Departure Lounge and The Anti-Gravity League,
trip-hop and space-rock in Sidekick & Emo)
without ever losing its hallucinated pace.
The Telescopes returned with a precious ambience and a sleepy intensity on
Third Wave (Double Agent, 2002). Other than an expanded
instrumentation, the album is not significantly different from its
predecessors: lots of class but no innovation.
Ditto for #4 (2005).
As Approved by the Committee (Bomp, 2003) is a career retrospective.
Altered Perception (Space Age, 2004) is a compilation of unreleased tracks and rarities.
The mini-album Hungry Audio Tapes (2006) was the most original work of
this phase.
Singles Compilation 1989-1991 (Mind Expansion, 2009) and
Singles Compilation #2 (Mind Expansion, 2009)
compile all the singles.
(notably Winter #7, The Perfect Needle #4, Another Sky, Household Objective #2, Dsm-1v Axis, Another Whip, The Blue Shroud Of Alkatraz on the latter).
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