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too clever. If you liked Lemon Jelly's wonderfully eccentric "Lost Horizons" CD then this is your next stop - a compilation of their first three EP's which is, in parts, even more "off the wall" but which like "Lost Horizons" is underpinned by such superb tunes and clever production that it just flows from start to finish. too naïve. Categorising this music is a hopeless task - what can you say about "Nervous Tension" other than it's a self-help monologue set to an insidious down-beat backing track that, first time, through will leave you completely bemused but which, despite its stupidity, hypnotically draws you back to hitting the replay button. or, "A Tune for Jack" with its ridiculous spoken opening and its loops of a child singing "ooh baby me" and a chap saying "and a big fella too" set to a wonderfully relaxing tune other than that it's equally, hypnotically addictive. or, just inspired. In the end, the best thing to do is just to lie back and enjoy it all and, on the way, marvel at this slice of brilliantly odd, beautifully bizarre chill out music.
This album is great to study to, but it can put you in a trance if you let it. I like the beginning of the CD better than the end. It gets a little weird toward the end.
LemonJelly's first release was uniquely exotic enough to matter in a sea of faux-experimental electronica. The album is one of the finer examples of when techno can transcend dated confines (and remember in electronic music time goes by much, much faster then other genres) by not becoming a slave to methodical modulations and instead focusing on an all enveloping melodic approach to compliment any fitting percussion.
Even when they sample the faraway reports of American astronauts or a Russian choir there is something in the flavour of Lemon Jelly (Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin) that is quirkily English. Here, as some boffin belts out on Lost Horizons, their second album, "All the ducks are swimming in the water, faldaralderaldo, faldaralderaldo." If this album were an armchair, it would be orange and inflatable. There is nothing exceptional about Lemon Jelly's folky electronica; it doesn't so much push boundaries as graze happily inside them. But it does so beautifully, with a loopy glee that will get you in the end
a feeble attempt to substitute humor for good music. two or three good tracks. otherwise annoying. now, please enter that this feedback is not helpful because you disagree.
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