Lemon Jelly - '64-'95 (Impotent Fury)

A record from electro chillsters Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin is, as all hipsters worth their glitter by now will know, as welcome as a holiday from an English spring. Since 2002's shimmeringly lovely Lost Horizons the world has been without jelliness and has been the hungrier for it.

This third album's memory-testing title signifies the span in years of the various samples they've used. There's one sample per track, fleshed out with the Jellies' array of acoustic guitar, looped beats, synths and warmed squidgyness. And it's a little faster, a little rockier, a little evolved from that which went before.

Amongst the cut-and-pasted snippets are a Maori warrior, R&B starlet Monica and the never more legendary William Shatner - and his rantings as Cap'n Kirk here sound infinitely cooler than the recently released hilarity that was his own covers album.

As all this delightfulness would suggest, it's a varied record, shattering the jelly mould just a smidgen to serve up a mouthwatering selection of flavours. Moments land heavier than the pastoral chilled-out material the jellyheads are famed for. This is particulary so with the catchy Only Time and lead single The Shouty Track. Much darker than Nice Weather For Ducks or The Staunton Lick, this track lodges itself firmly into the brain after just one listen, bidden or not, and does its best to disconcert.

Don't Stop Now is, if something must be, the weakest moment on the album. But even it casts a spell all of its own as it lulls one into a looped happiness. So relaxing it is that the whisperingly quiet acoustic arrival of Make Things Right, featuring Terri Walker's vocal talents, begins to call to mind images so warm and cuddly that you're glad you lived to hear this record. It really does make things right.

The Shatner shenanigan rounds out in suitably epic sci-fi style, taking us on the aural equivalent of an intergalactic adventure. Rest assured this is no random marriage of beats to words - it's nothing short of inspired. As indeed is this whole lovely record.

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