No amount of priming could really prepare you for this album, just as nothing could have similarly prepared you for the collective meat and two dozen veg that was the KY: release. If you haven’t heard of Lemon Jelly then you’re not the only one, rejecting as they do the usual steady roll of press activity prior to any release. Mavericks? Activists? Well actually neither – they’re simply putting music together that they rather than you are necessarily meant to enjoy. That this refreshingly simple working premise means they make great music for the rest of us seems almost incidental.
Essentially the first full length outing if you ignore the KY: release (a collection of 3 EPs), Lost Horizons finds Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin suppressing the contrived but marvellously playful ghosts of easy listening and 50s icons and avoiding for the most part all that you’d expect. Instead they magicallly splice together only the daftest and most remarkable samples they can find, usually without exposing the joins. The cut n paste approach is still there: it’s just less obvious.
Yes they are still plundering the troves of children’s TV and instructional audio and yes, they are still as unpretentious and as tropical as ever despite yearning for a forgotten era of innocence. Like it’s predecessor it’s fresh and nostalgic at the same time. Who else apart from Brian Cant could take a children’s nursery rhyme about ducks and transform it into a lush chill-out dreamscape (‘Nice Weather For Ducks’).
Lost Horizons is a remarkable album regardless of the criteria you’re going to use: consistent, focused, harmonious, and repeat listens reveal an almost inexhaustible seam of sounds and previously missed devices.
Truculent beats, shimmering horn sections, folksy guitars – it’s a spunky little glitterball of hope for downtempo.
If you like St Germain, Air, Zero 7, Telepopmusik you’re going to fall hopelessly in love with this.