A thirtieth anniversary reappraisal of Glasgow’s post-rock/experimental outfit Telstar Ponies, which featured members of bands Teenage Fanclub, 18 Wheeler and Mogwai amongst their personnel. Their debut album, In The House Of A Few Minutes, was launched in 1995 across the time of Britpop and promptly flew proper beneath the radar. Martin Grey appears to be like again briefly at this nearly forgotten band’s criminally underrated masterpiece.
The interval between 1990-1999 was, musically talking, a much more fascinating and mind-bogglingly numerous decade than most informal listeners appear to recall – a lot much less give credit score to. Granted, most of its largest promoting bands/releases can be attributed to simply 4 fundamental ‘genres’ that spanned that interval. Chronologically talking they have been: post-acid home rave/dance/techno, adopted by the dual guitar-centric eras of grunge, then Britpop, and, lastly, journey hop/storage/EDM/drum’n’bass (I select to ignore nu-metal which additionally started to make headway across the finish of the last decade largely due to its relative pointlessness as a really authentic style, and never one single album from any ‘shoegaze’ band went multi-platinum both).
You both liked all that Britpop stuff otherwise you hated it. For me, I used to be decidedly on the fence relating to a lot of it, having fun with a handful of the releases of that interval while being completely derisive of many others. I received’t title names right here as a result of it might be gratuitous, however as I’ve stated elsewhere, there was a lot else that was sensible about music within the Nineties that it’s typically a travesty simply what number of completely fucking magnificent albums and bands have been neglected and never given their due throughout this decade.
Straddling this similar 10 yr timeline in Glasgow have been three guitar bands of observe nevertheless: Teenage Fanclub (shaped 1989), 18 Wheeler (shaped 1992), and Mogwai (shaped 1995). Prior so far, there have been a pair extra that got here to prominence within the mid-Eighties: The Soup Dragons and BMX Bandits. All of those 5 bands had one other band in widespread: Telstar Ponies, which featured members from all the above, notably David Keenan (18 Wheeler), Brendan O’Hare (Teenage Fanclub and later Mogwai), Sushil Okay. Dade (Soup Dragons / BMX Bandits) and John Hogarty (BMX Bandits).
18 Wheeler, particularly have been memorable for the straightforward indisputable fact that they have been supported by the then-nascent Oasis at one present at Glasgow’s King Tut’s in Might 1993 when Creation boss Alan McGee signed the latter – having additionally signed 18 Wheeler to his roster.
By 1994, after 18 Wheeler’s first album, Keenan had already left to kind Telstar Ponies, initially with Soup Dragons (and Future Pilot AKA) mainstay Sushil Okay. Dade, and John Hogarty from BMX Bandits, along with first drummer Neil Grant. This line up was quickly succeeded by the addition of Rachel Devine and Teenage Fanclub’s Brendan O’Hare after the departures of Grant, Dade and Hogarty.
Typically erroneously thought to be a ‘supergroup’ mainly due to most of its members having performed with the opposite named bands, Telstar Ponies have little in widespread with the vast majority of them. Their sound nonetheless encapsulates parts from these bands, plus extra esoteric, experimental, neo-folk and avant garde leanings which turned way more outstanding after the arrival of fellow songwriters Devine and O’Hare. Extra crucially, they selected to deal with the prevailing England-centric Britpop circus with the indifference and disdain it merited and focus as a substitute on influences stemming from throughout the pond within the type of noise bands like Sonic Youth, Bitch Magnet, Bardo Pond, Band Of Susans, in addition to bands as numerous as Pink Home Painters, Galaxie 500 and Slint.
Fortunately transcending all makes an attempt at easy pigeonholing, Telstar Ponies launched a clutch of singles and two full size albums (one in every of them a double) between 1994 and 1997 that defied categorisation: an amalgam of something from folks and ethnic ambient to krautrock, from doleful acoustic laments to weighty stoner rock and full-on distorted guitar freak outs that will characterise lots of the following work of Mogwai who shaped shortly after (and with whom O’Hare was additionally a member of in 1997, contributing keyboards and guitar).
The debut, In The House Of A Few Minutes, launched in 1995 (through the peak of the aforementioned Britpop wave, thus serving as a welcome antedote to all of that retrogressive sludge) is likely one of the nice lengthy misplaced albums of the yr for my part. Launched to minimal fanfare, save for the same old noble championing by the likes of John Peel (hell, not even self-professed ‘indie rock radio connoisseurs’ Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq gave it a lot due – disgrace on them!), it was quickly neglected and unjustly consigned to the time tunnel of historical past.
ITSOAFM is a delightfully unwieldly beast: coming throughout like a kind of unusual Rubik puzzles that unveil a distinct permutation at each twist, its 11 tracks lurch and swing merrily throughout all conceivable touchstones, with no two successive numbers bearing a lot relation to the one earlier than or after. Some would say that is akin to an unfocused document however I urge to vary. It’s that sense of stress and launch, adopted by full flatlining in both fractured ambient or frantic gonzoid noise territories that offers this recording a lot frisson and broiling, addictive depth.
It’s music for uneasy truces, navel gazing, drowning of sorrows alone at dwelling, and accordingly, verbal sparring and confrontation with undesirable enemies. To some that will be a heck of much more fascinating than songs about hedonism, gin and tonic, and cocaine [sic] supernovas, not to mention any extra third particular person narratives of upstart ne’er do wells (sung in risible slack-jawed faux-cockney accents) than one can abdomen.
The sequencing is damned sensible too: if a soundwave diagram of the whole album was reproduced on a display screen it might characteristic three nearly good parabolas. The peaks happen within the center part (Maya / Monster / Her Identify), however appropriately earlier than each, there’s a second of readability and repose (Moon Don’t Come Up Tonight / Aspect Netting). That is the quiet/loud/quiet/louder/quiet/actually fucking loud dynamic which contemporaries Mogwai (and Slint earlier than them) made their widespread mode d’emploi, and deployed right here it does the right job of stopping this album from sounding like one lengthy drag to the uninitiated.
For instance, opener The Moon Is Not A Puzzle eases you in with light chiming strums and the hushed voice of David Keenan – earlier than an insistent pounding guitar part arrives with Rachel Devine’s intentionally deadpan narrative, and step by step the stress begins to subtly construct with out changing into overbearing. Every kind of disembodied noises could be heard within the background as this monitor fades then it’s instantly overlaid by a few bizarre vocal utterances (it’s unclear what) earlier than an entire crimson herring ensues: what sounds just like the sampled motorik drum beat of a Neu! 2 monitor kicking off Lugengeschichte (German for ‘tall story / made up story’). An amusingly irreverent Krautrock take-off: the driving one-note guitar underbelly convincingly apes the acquainted Neu! template with Keenan making weird strangulated noises over the intro, as if he’s being garroted by an unseen assailant. His poised-on-a-knife-edge story of shedding management, emotional collapse and cities on hearth are punctuated, through the refrains, by hysterical exclamations amid screams of crowd unrest within the background. Loopy shit certainly.
Maya, a near-instrumental with barely audible vocals, begins innocuously sufficient earlier than a surging stampede of elephantine guitars barge in on the midway mark. The following, extra downtempo Two’s Insane follows the same trajectory with intermittent tidal waves of guitar towards which Keenan’s (generally vague) vocals are continuously pitching a duel with, leaving the ebb and move of the noises to alternately soothe and unsettle as a substitute. That is the form of factor that goes on right here – the fixed see-sawing between quiet contemplative passages after which sections of virtually atonal, unhinged bedlam.
Early single Not Even Starcrossed is extra simple and conventional sounding, being a love music of kinds, however the best way the ominous guitar bursts often punctuate all through after which find yourself carrying the ultimate couple of minutes utterly hints at one thing far weightier than the lovelorn sentiments might in any other case counsel.
Chief album centrepiece (and largest parabolic peak of all of them) is Monster, which like its title suggests rides on portentous tumbling percussion and comparatively restrained verses from Keenan in the beginning then all of the sudden erupts into sheer all out noise assault, with Keenan screaming the title repeatedly earlier than issues begin over again. By the point the third cycle comes round issues are at full tilt, with Keenan now in a frenzy – the piledriving guitars dissolving into suggestions and the monitor assuming speaker-shredding Godzilla-like proportions.
Both aspect of this monolith nevertheless, sit two rather more serene tracks. The primary is an surprising gem: an elegaic weeping guitar-and-piano-led cowl of Moon Don’t Come Up Tonight, by free jazz / avant garde singer Patty Waters* from her 1966 album Sings. Delivered utterly straight by a hushed Keenan (and never gender transposed), it’s a really stunning and tranquil respite from the unsettling tumult that surrounds it. The opposite monitor, Aspect Netting, has the same restrained tempo with a resigned and nearly self-confessional lyric from Keenan. It offers a second sustained second of aid and readability the place elsewhere proceedings typically get gatecrashed by blasts of indignant guitar pyrotechnics.
The stress is revisited on second single Her Identify. “It’s darkish in right here, no mild / I can nonetheless see you ….. I can nonetheless attain you / I can nonetheless hear you / Somebody activate the sunshine / Me and her received’t sleep tonight”. The virtually mantric repetition of the traces trace at any individual slowly shedding their very own thoughts, while the backing monitor pummels away constructing to a climax that, unusually, doesn’t arrive however as a substitute stops at a false ending, solely to then shift into reverse for just a few seconds earlier than abruptly fading out.
Penultimate quantity Innerhalb Weniger Minuten (‘inside a couple of minutes’ – ostensibly the album title translated into German) is a comparatively mellow spoken monologue from Rachel Devine set towards a backdrop of guitars and – curiously – a vibraphone, and the transient album nearer I Nonetheless Imagine In Christmas Bushes is a plaintive and nearly childlike ode by Keenan which ends the album on a extra calmly reflective and optimistic observe.
*Such was Telstar Ponies’ new discovered curiosity within the singularly uncompromising work of Patty Waters, they even named one other monitor (a B-side instrumental featured on their Not Even Starcrossed single) after her.
Future releases and initiatives
Telstar Ponies would concern only one extra album throughout their preliminary tenure earlier than their first dissolution in late 1997. This album, Voices From The New Music (1996), was much more audaciously eclectic and diversified in scope, taking in ambient, free-jazz, neo-folk, ethnic, psychedelic, Gregorian, in addition to additional excursions into the polar sonic extremes that typified lots of the post-rock and experimental noise releases of the time.
One album spotlight particularly – the stupendous 13 minute epic Does Your Coronary heart Have Wings? (once more, additionally launched as a single!) – is successfully a monitor that foreshadowed every thing that Mogwai subsequently launched. Its quiet/loud/quiet/louder sheer guitar armageddon construction nonetheless sounds completely astonishing and thoughts blowing to this present day when positioned into context with most of the related bands that practised this form of factor. Climaxing in an limitless, raging, seething firestorm of ear-bleeding distortion and suggestions which appears to get extra infernal because it goes on, it actually takes your breath away proper till its dying seconds when even the band sound like they’re completely spent (witness the sound of Rachel Devine’s mournful wailing on the shut of the monitor).
Though the band quickly shed members (O’Hare and Gavin Laird forming Macrocosmica, while the previous was additionally briefly with Mogwai), Telstar Ponies did regroup with new personnel solely sporadically to launch a pair extra one off singles up till 2002, after which level the band have been on an nearly indefinite hiatus as Devine and Laird shaped different music ventures, while Keenan arrange his personal Glasgow-based document label / retailer referred to as Volcanic Tongue between 2005-2015, dally with just a few different initiatives, and have become a full time journalist writing about underground / experimental / industrial music for numerous publications resembling The Wire (often inflicting controversy with a few of his extra outspoken opinions and musings on standard up to date artists) and finally discover additional success as a novelist.
Telstar Ponies Discography
Singles
Maps and Starcharts (1994)
Not Even Starcrossed EP (1995)
Her Identify (1995)
Mors Factum Musica EP (1996)
Does Your Coronary heart Have Wings? (1996)
Brewery of Eggshells (1996)
Farewell Farewell (1999)
Hares on the Mountain EP (2002)
Albums
Within the House Of A Few Minutes (1995)
Voices From The New Music (1996)
All textual content by Martin Grey
Examine Martin’s profile right here for extra articles
Telstar Ponies music could be streamed on Spotify
Macrocosmica could be discovered on Bandcamp
David Keenan’s e-book Volcanic Tongue, printed March 2025, collects collectively all of his writings (evaluations, interviews, blogs, and so on) for the varied music magazines and publications he has contributed to through the years and could be purchased right here by way of White Rabbit Books
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